Reminders and tracking

Every game has two buttons. Email reminder sends you a private game-day email; nobody else sees it. Track on Discord puts the game on your servers' boards and reminders, gives it a live card, and starts a server event once a tracker is on it; your servers' people see you there. Follow a team (the ★) and the two buttons apply to every one of its games, shown as “· following Utah” on the card. Press a button on one game to turn just that game off; the follow stays. Emails come on game day, and the night before for early kickoffs. “Let friends see my games” is only about friends.

Discord

The CFB Planner bot posts your crew's games to a channel, turns watch parties into events and answers /cfb commands. Add it to your server — the guide takes five minutes.

Pick'em

On the Picks page, pick the winner of each ranked game before it kicks off; each game closes at its kickoff. A right pick is 1 point, and the one game you make your lock of the week is 2 points when it's right. The leaderboard has three boards: Friends, Servers (your Discord servers) and Everyone, which is open without signing in. The Awards tab gives out weekly awards once the week's last game ends: best call, worst call, upset hunter and perfect week. To keep off the public board, turn off “Show me on the public pick'em board” under Friends; your Friends and Servers boards don't change.

Your own bracket

On the Playoff page, My bracket starts from today's projected field. Swap in any FBS team with ⇄, reseed with ↑ ↓, then tap a team in each game to pick it to win, through to your champion. Changing a winner clears only the later picks that depended on it. Save as often as you like: one bracket a season, edited all season. It is private until you make it public; a public bracket shows under Community with your username and has a link to share.

The predictor

Pick two teams and the model plays the game: the projected score, who's favoured and by how much, and each side's chance. The Tape sets each offense against the defense it faces, ranked among every FBS team and adjusted for opponents. A side has the edge when its rank is more than 3 places better; otherwise it's even.

Likely starters and player cards

Likely starters sets each team's quarterback, running back, three receivers and tight end head to head. The likely starter is whoever got the most work in the team's most recent game; the game before breaks ties. A regular with no recorded stats shows as no stats last game or no stats last 2 in the swap list and is never the default.

Choose ▾ on any slot to swap in someone else. The projected score, the win bar and the Projection with this lineup line all move, and the player you swap in takes over that slot's usual share of the plays. Until you swap someone, the projection assumes everyone plays. We tested opening on the likely starters against four past seasons, and it called games less accurately, so the first projection keeps everyone playing. Model vs line always compares the line with the game as scheduled, everyone playing.

Hover a name (or tap it on a phone) to see his card: stars and national rank, class, where he transferred from, four stats for the season at his position, and what he is worth over a backup. Players with no recruiting rating show Unrated. A pass counts once: its value is shared between the passer and the receiver, so quarterbacks' and receivers' worths add up. A player with only a handful of plays counts as a typical backup (+0.0). A player's value leans toward a typical starter at his position until he has enough plays to stand on his own. One wild play, like a fumble or a single huge gain, can't swing a player's value much.

Reading a game card

The thick left edge is the home team's conference. A conference game carries one tag; a non-conference game carries two, away first. A #4 prefix is that week's ranking. Where the feed has points, the final score replaces the kickoff time. Neutral-site games read “vs” rather than “at”.

Time zones move day boundaries

Every date is projected into the zone you pick, not merely relabelled. A 10:30pm Pacific kickoff sits on Saturday out west and on Sunday in New York — in the week board, the month grid and the table alike. Kickoff-window chips are evaluated in the same projected zone, so switching zones reshuffles them.

Filters

Conference chips hide a game only when both teams are switched off, so a cross-conference matchup survives if either side is on. Alt-click a conference chip to isolate it. Whatever is currently filtered is listed in the amber bar under the toolbar.