After a cold, dark, relatively snow-less winter, March has finally returned. With March comes the arrival of many things we miss over the winter hibernation period such as sunlight, outdoor activities, baseball, Spring seasonal beers, birds, allergies and most importantly the Anyone But Cro Invitational.
After much consideration, it was determined by the ABC Board of Directors that this exclusive event required some major overhaul to continue to compete with other tournaments. While we recognize we have an established market, we wanted to be a little more cutting edge with our event this year.
The first change that was made, and perhaps the most difficult, was the elimination of the custom ABC Bracket and manual scoring process. The DIY approach has been replaced with the Yahoo Bracket Manager. Details on how to join are listed at the bottom of this post. While this may or may not bring outrage to the masses, please allow me to explain why this change was made.
Over the course of the years, ABC Invitational continued to grow in size. The manual scoring approach would require a paper copy of each bracket, entering each players pick into a custom spreadsheet, verifying the entered picks against the paper copy, so on so forth. While this is OK for a group of 10 or so people, keeping score for 40 brackets this way simply took too much time. With games ending as late as 12:30 in the morning, the scoring process itself took sometimes as much as 4 hours. It was taking away from why the ABC is such a special tournament. It prohibited blogging, ridicule, and keeping its contestants informed. While we are saddened to see the ABC bracket go, we are excited about the change to the Yahoo bracket. This should allow the ABC to get back to why it was founded, the blog.
With the addition of more blogging, the ABC has also gone live on Twitter. You can follow me @anyonebutcro. I'll be tweeting live tournament updates, insider ridicule that you can't get anywhere else, and most importantly, drunk twitpics. We here at ABC feel like this while enhance the participants tournament experience and will remind them why they continue to join this tournament year in and year out.
Unlike everything else in the economy, the entry fee will not increase. It is remaining at $10. No need to increase it really. Boy Pierce is content with winning $300 or so every year, so $10 it is.
Anyway, here is the link to join the Yahoo group:
http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/register/joinprivategroup_assign_team?GID=21373&P=abc2012
Group ID: 21373
Password: abc2012
Please let me know if you have difficulty joining.
Also, keep checking back for updates. One week until the bracket is released!
Happy Cro Hunting
UJ
