CFPOOL 2007 Online Entry Forms
All of you who participated in the pool last year are still in the system. Your names and passwords are unchanged and should still be active. If you need your email address updated just enter your new email address the next time you submit an entry. We will always use the latest email address submitted on the online form.
If you don't have an login, you can create a login by clicking here or you will be prompted by a "Create Login" page when you submit your first entry online. At this point you should make sure your email and password is correct. You can also choose to receive an email verifying the receipt of of your entry by selecting the checkbox labeled "Send email verification". Make sure we have a valid email address for you. We have completed a Member Services page which will allow you to modify your password, email and email notifications.
How to make your picks:
The entry form is fairly straight forward. The top of the screen consists of your name along with a password so that no one can accidentally submit an entry under a different name.
You can choose pretty much anything as your name. Many of us use our given names (e.g., I am Steve Schmadeke). Others prefer to use more colorful monikers, usually indicating a rooting interest. Names (and passwords for that matter) can have embedded spaces though keep in mind that the online and email reports are optimized for names shorter than about 16 characters. And finally, the names for entries generated by computer are traditionally distinguished by bracketing the name with asterisks (e.g., *gfsys2*).
For a password, choose anything you'd like. The password isn't meant for serious security. The pages aren't secure. The password is mostly to prevent accidental collisions between entries. There are many similar names out there and we've had a least one case of mistaken identity because of a mistyped moniker.
On the left side are all the games for that week. Select who you think will win each game. Whenever you select a team in the left panel it will be displayed in the list box on the right. Select the teams in the list box on the right and use the "Up" and "Down" buttons to rank your winning teams in the order of confidence, the top being the most confident and the bottom being the least confident. When you are satisfied with your picks hit the Submit button. The next page will either be a Validation page, Create Login page, or a page describing any problems that may have occurred. The form will also email a copy of your entry to us and to the email address you gave on the form.
Troubleshooting and other information:
The form has been tested and used in Internet Explorer and Netscape on Windows, Macintosh and Unix platforms. It works well, though you may find with some browsers that the table layout when the form is initially displayed cause the up and down arrows to overlap the team list. In our experience, clicking on one of the arrows will cause the browser to redraw the screen with the proper layout. In some configurations, resizing the browser window just by a few pixels will do the trick.
The entry forms use cookies so you do not need to re-enter your name and email each week. If multiple participants use the same machine to send their entries, the password prevents one user from accidentally sending in an entry for another user.
The cookie also keeps track of your most recent entries for each week. If you submit an entry and then come back later to update an entry, the cookie will enable the form to display your selections in the same order.
The form will also work if you do not have cookies enabled, though you will be forced to start from scratch each time you pull up the form.
The form does require you to have scripting support enabled in your browser. Sorry, there is no good way to implement this interface in a pure HTML environment. You need to have some client-side support.
While this discussion may seem overwhelming, it is easy to use the online entry form and it is much less error-prone than formatting email messages. Our error rates prior to introducing the online entry forms last year ran nearly 20%. That is, nearly 20% of the entries required at least a minor touch up for us to process using the scoring programs. Two percent had errors significant enough that we could not form a complete entry from the message (usually because a team was missing or duplicated). And we have to perform some manual processing on all the email messages, even if they are formatted perfectly.
The web form guarantees a perfectly-formatted entry that gets into the scoring system without any manual intervention. We heartily endorse using this method of entering the CFPOOL, though we will continue to support classic email entries.
If you have problems with the online entry forms please contact us. If you don't get a response before the kickoff deadline you will need to submit your entry via email manually (instructions).