Background
When I was in college some of my friends were gambling on the NCAA Bowl Games which was illegal at the time. During conversations with Dad when I was home for the holidays we started discussing which team would win and by how many points. We were often not in agreement about who would win and by how much.
It wasn’t too long before we tried to get bets going between the two of us, but it was impossible to get agreement on who got which team and how many points the spread would be. Dad would often say things like “I’ll take Ohio State and give you three points.” When I tried to reverse that (by saying I would take Ohio State and give him three points) he would say that if I had Ohio State he would need 14 points.
Thus this unique Bowl Game scoring status was developed (see below for explanation). Initially the winner (i.e. the person with the highest total score) was rewarded with bragging rights but it seemed like we should have more at stake than that so Dad made a “Bowl Game Trophy” pictured at the top of this page. In addition we finally made the stakes that one bottle of wine was to be awarded for each point the winner had. It was also decreed that the loser had to deliver the wine in person to the other’s house.
Dad was always a bit wild with his predictions and tended to favor the Big 10 schools. When we first started college football tended to recruit locally and the Big 10 had a significant disadvantage since they were typically practicing outdoors in winter conditions. I was able to take advantage of this and typically won many of the early contests. Then USA Today started publishing the odds and Dad would use these to predict his scores and became a lot more successful. I caught onto this after a while and adjusted my strategy by guessing scores close to the USA Today predictions which gave me a better chance of winning.
This page gives the history of approximately 10 years of betting although we had many years before this, but no records were kept in those days.
Scoring
One point is awarded if the predictor is the only one who picks the correct team. The point is awarded regardless of point spreads selected. If both predictors select the same winning team (or both pick the losing team) then one point is awarded to the predictor with the closest point spread. If both predictors have the same winning team and point spread the result is considered a tie and no points are awarded. A predictor who correctly selects the winning team and the correct point spread is awarded two points. A predictor who correctly selects the winning team and the exact score of the game is awarded four points. Exact score predictions rarely occur, but the person who gets one nearly always is the winner for that year.