Stampede Blue Pick'em Contest & Winning Stats Posting Schedule

Think you can pick football games better than everyone else here at Stampede Blue? Well, here's your chance to prove like. Once again we'll be running two different Pick'em contests, one for just picking winners, and one picking against the spread, both run through Yahoo!. Those of you who participated last year have already gotten the invite to join, and many of you have. For everyone else who wasn't in last year and wants to play, here's all the info you need:

• Straight Up Contest: I toyed with doing Confidence points, but I think I'm going to hold off, at least for this year. We'll put it to a vote next year. Just pick the winners in each game each week. Group ID: 34464, Password: AndrewLuck
• Against the Spread Contest: This one separates the best from the rest. You think you can win betting on NFL games? This is the contest for you. Group ID: 34470, Password: andrewluck

Remember to get your pick in for tomorrow night's game, but if you miss it, you can still get all of Sunday and Monday for Week 1. Yahoo! Pro Football Pick'em.

Also, as most of you know, we have our own stats system here at Stampede Blue called the Winning Stats, which I've been refining now for four seasons. Like the last couple of seasons, you'll get your official game preview article Thursday morning each week, complete with stats and my view of the game, and you'll get an Inside the Numbers article the following Tuesday, once all games for the week are complete, showing just how well the Colts did in comparison to the rest of the league.

I'll also be predicting each game during the season, based on the Winning Stats, and those will come out Thursday afternoon, just in time for the start of each NFL week. I'll be including these predictions in the weekly picks contest, so you can see how well you do against the computer throughout the season. For the record, the predictor has the Giants beating the Cowboys 31-21 (73.4%).

The last thing I'm going to include with the weekly predictions is my top 5 picks against the spread, as if I'm participating in the Las Vegas Hotel SuperContest, just to see how I do against the cream of the crop, guys (and gals) who pay $1500 to enter, which is well, well above my limit. The winner last year hit 60.5%, and my goal is to beat that. You'll see my progress each week.

Starting around Week 5 or so, I'll have a weekly Power Ranking and Strength of Schedule, but without a couple weeks worth of data, it's pretty meaningless.