Protect Your Unit Week 1 Picks Thread: The Show That Never Ends

(DISCLAIMER: This game is for entertainment purposes only. No actual money is being wagered.)

Welcome, all my friends!

This is Week 1 of Year 10 of The Daily Stampede’s regular ongoing feature, Protect Your Unit. Everybody gets 1,000 units of fake money to start the season, which they can use to make fake-money bets on real college football games. Each Friday we preview the weekend’s games, and on Monday we compile the results (though it will be Tuesday this week due to the Monday night Clemson-Georgia Tech game.

Anyone who wants to join the contest can drop me a line at angerthespy@gmail.com! I’ll give you a login to protectyouru.net and everything else you need.

I’m still ironing out bugs on the website, though it should be pretty functional now. I have moved the website to a new host since last year. Actually, I’ve moved it twice, because after I moved companies I also had to upgrade hosting packages. It’s been a lot of duct tape and bondo, but it’s holding together. One of these decades I’m going to give it a complete rewrite.

The rules are as always: you must bet from 50 to 250 units on this week’s games; these totals became 5% and 25% of your stack each week going forward. You must make at least 3 bets total, 1 of which must be on a game involving an AAC team (though you don’t have to bet on the AAC team). AAC teams include the six incoming schools, and don’t include the three that are leaving (though their games against AAC opponents still meet this requirement).

A couple of you over-bet this week because the website didn’t catch it. I’ll reach out to you about how to amend.

There are Futures bets on offer. You can bet up to 250 units on season-long propositions: over/under win total, national champ, conference champ, and division champ. This is entirely optional.

What’s also new this season: the Gambletron 3000 is expanded! It no longer has its own page, but some games are designated with a gold background. Any over/under and point spread bet on those games pays at -102 instead of the usual -110. There now can be multiple games instead of one, and you aren’t limited to one line. This is intended to model “promos” where real sports books try to drive action on certain games, by offering better payouts. In PYU’s case, these are chosen randomly, and can be any game that does not involve USF, UCF, Florida, or Florida State.

I’m also adding new website features, like more color-coding, and the ability to filter visible games as desired.

The weekly PYU threads are also a traditional place to talk about college football in general, like that side-splitter in Dublin last week. That made me the first winner of the year:

GaryStephen Northwestern +450.0 money line to beat Nebraska Northwestern 31-28 20.00 WIN 90.00

Yay me. We’ve also had two parlay wins already. No points for guessing who the first one was:

bullsonparade96 North Texas pick ‘em points over Texas-El Paso; Under 55.5 points in the North Texas-Texas-El Paso game (WIN,WIN) North Texas 31-13; North Texas 31-13 100.00 WIN 260.00

Danj725 Central Michigan +21.0 points over Oklahoma State; Pittsburgh -7.0 points over West Virginia; Penn State -3.0 points over Purdue (WIN,PUSH,WIN) Oklahoma State 58-44; Pittsburgh 38-31; Penn State 35-31 50.00 WIN 130.00

When a parlay contains a push (tie), it is removed and paid out as a smaller parlay. So Danj725 wins at 2.6 to 1 instead of 6 to 1.

The All Picks page will list all the picks made so far this week, including won/lost results if they are in. The Standings Page is up-to-the minute, and lists everyone who’s made a bet so far this season.

Have fun and enjoy the football all weekend long! Because there is a Monday night game, Week 1 does not end until Tuesday morning. The Week 1 results will be posted then. You can still join the fun, so send an email to my address above and I’ll get you added. Until then: