Then perhaps you’d like to consider running (or finding someone else to run) your own 2012 ACM Awards pool!

That’s right, this Sunday at 8:00PM Eastern CBS will air the 47th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, and I’ve created two fun and challenging pool formats that are sure to be a blast. All you need is any copy of Microsoft excel (’97-2010) and a group of willing participants to get started.

Since the spreadsheets are fully automated, it takes just a few minutes to fill them out. The only thing participants have to type in is their name and email, everything else is selected from drop down menus. And for the people administering the pool. All they have to do is set a buy in price for the pools (free or for real money), enter an email to have people send completed entries to, and then copy/paste two lines of text from each player’s completed Entry sheet into the Score Sheet.

You can then send a copy of the Score Sheet out to everyone who wants to follow along at home. When the winners are announced you simply select them from a drop down menu and the Score Sheet automatically calculates how many points each player receives, updates the standings, and assigns payouts to the eventual winners.

Site Contest

If you want to participate in a pool like this but don’t have the time or energy to organize it yourself, you can download this entry form and email it to pools[at]joshuabillings[dot]com. I’ll accept the first 20 entries (including me). It’ll just be for fun, so there’s no money to send or win, but I’ll email everyone a copy of the Score Sheet so that you can follow along at home.

Download the Spreadsheets

To download your own customizable spreadsheets and check them out first hand, simply click the following links. Or, to read more about them first, check out the descriptions below.

Entry Form Download/configure this file first so you can send it out to all the participants.
Score Sheet You can download/configure this sheet later, you don’t need it until you start receiving completed entries.

Pool Format 1: The RAN Pool

RAN stands for Rank All Nominees, and that’s exactly what you get to do in this pool. Rank each nominee for each of the 9 categories from 1st to last in order of how likely you think they are to win. The higher you rank the eventual winning nominee, the more points you’ll receive (Rank/Points charts are listed next to each category). The person who finishes with the most total points by the end of the awards show wins!

To rank the nominees you simply select them from drop down menus labeled 1st through 5th. After you rank a nominee, it disappears from the other menus so that you don’t accidentally rank one twice.

You can even customize the point values for each category under the settings tab.

And the changes will automatically be reflected in the Scoring Example and the Rank/Points charts.

Pool Format 2: The Confidence Pool

In the confidence pool you select one winner from the drop down menus for each of the 9 categories. Then, under the “Conf Points” column, select a number from 9 to 1 based on how confident you are about each pick (9 = most confident). You can only use each number once. Each correct pick will net you the corresponding amount of points. The person with the most total points wins.

Once you select a number it’s automatically removed from the other menus so that you always know exactly what numbers you have left.

This pool is almost always won by only a few points, so use your confidence points wisely!

Download Links

Here are the download links again. Enjoy!

Entry Form Download/configure this file first so you can send it out to all the participants.
Score Sheet You can download/configure this sheet later, you don’t need it until you start receiving completed entries.

To download the spreadsheets and check them out first hand, simply click the following links. Or, to read more about them first, check out the descriptions below.

Big Pool / Confidence Pool / Snake Draft (works with most spreadsheet programs)
Salary Cap Format (.xlsx – likely requires Excel 2007 or 2010)

How Odds Were Determined

For some of the formats it was necessary to determine how likely each nominee was to win beforehand. To find this out, I simply took the odds from online sportsbooks and converted them into percentages out of 100.

I couldn’t find a single sportsbook that had odds for every category, so I just went to easyodds.com and used the odds from the first sportsbook (left to right) that had odds for all of that category’s nominees. (Note: All odds were determined on February 13th, 2012.)

The Big Pool

In this format you get to rank every nominee, for every category, in order of how likely you think they are to win. The higher you rank the eventual winner, the more points you receive.

For example, if The Artist wins best picture and you picked them as most likely to win, you would receive 90 points and gain ground on anyone who ranked them second or below. If you picked them as second most likely, you’d gain ground against anyone who picked them 3rd or lower, but lose ground to all who picked them 1st.

Categories are weighted based on importance (from 90 points for picking the winner of best picture, all the way down to 10 points for picking the winners of the short film categories.

Confidence Pool

Pick one winner for each of the 24 categories, then rank them from 24 to 1 (24 = most confident) based on how confident you are that that nominee will win. You can only use each number once, and each correct pick will net you the corresponding amount of points. The person with the most total points wins.

Snake Draft

Here’s where things get a little more interesting. For the snake draft, all categories are equal. There are 24 categories and thus 24 winners. The person with the most winners wins.

Draft order is randomly determined and participants then pick nominees, one at a time in a standard snake style draft (the person with the first pick in the odd rounds, gets the last pick in the even rounds — e.g. in a four person draft the order would go 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1).

The spreadsheet includes a “cheat sheet” listing the 70 nominees most likely to win their category, and then a “Pick Recorder” sheet to record who picked whom.

Salary Cap

In this format each nominee is priced at a rate of $1 per percentage point, and you get a budget of $1000 to spend on anywhere from 24-30 nominees. The spreadsheet is completely automated with drop down menus, and the sheets are protected to prevent anyone from doctoring the numbers.

Download Links

Here are the download links again. Enjoy!

Big Pool / Confidence Pool / Snake Draft (works with most spreadsheet programs)
Salary Cap Format (.xlsx – likely requires Excel 2007 or 2010)

There are many things that can seemingly be accomplished with enough sacrifice and hard work. But when you achieve something through sacrifice, you’re merely trading one resource for another. It’s about as much of an accomplish as buying a loaf a bread.

On the other hand, when you achieve an empowering new perspective, you multiply the value of everything around you. Each thought carries you closer and closer to previously imperceptible solutions. It’s like inventing sliced bread and instantly seeing a few applications for it, which soon lead dozens—and then hundreds—more as your singular idea gives birth to a myriad of million dollar industries.

Sometimes trade-offs are the path of least resistance—you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. But when it comes to your life’s work, wouldn’t it be nice to elevate your perspective to a point where the wheels are already spinning in your favor?

It might be a lot easier to get to where you want to be by first finding a vehicle capable of taking you there. And who knows, once you’ve upgraded your means of travel, you may decide on a whole new destination. One that couldn’t be seen when you were merely choosing from the options that seemed achievable, but becomes abundantly obvious when viewed through the lens of what’s dream-able.

Besides, is there any truer achievement than living the life of your dreams? And when you think of the life of your dreams, what role do trade-offs play in it?

If the life of your dreams doesn’t involve making trade-offs, then how much sense does it make to get in the habit of making them now?

When dealing with others, rather than focusing on how they see things, or even how you would like them to see things, what if you focused instead on seeing yourself as someone who can see them as seeing that all as well? This way, the focal point is completely on you, and your ability to shift your perspective so that you can see things in ways that feel better to you. Then you don’t have to convince yourself that they’re going to improve, you need only remember that you have the ability to improve the way you see them.

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The balance between fully being yourself and dealing with how others may judge you. And how understanding the reasons others may see things the way they do can help you see them in a better light and feel better about the situation as a whole.

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How hiding certain aspects of yourself can prevent you from manifesting change in those areas in of your life. Because once something has manifested, it can be seen by all; and if you don’t want this part of you to be seen, your desire to hide will contradict your desire to manifest change.

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How the energy of a group can affect you. And finding a balance between hard work and being in the flow.

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What effect do the beliefs that are passed down from our parents have on us? Are they a hindrance to our growth or do they serve us?

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In this segment Sheri and I discuss how society tends to discourage people from being proud of themselves / happy for themselves by saying that openly broadcasting your awesomeness means that you’re being vane; and how we might feel better about ourselves by allowing ourselves to brag a little more.

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