Terms

You Know Ball is a prediction game. You call a whole regular season, the site builds a playoff bracket from your picks, and it scores you against real results as they happen.

It is free, and there is nothing to buy. No money changes hands on this site in either direction, and nothing here is a wager.

Do not bet money on anything you read here. Nothing on this site is a tip, a recommendation, or a prediction we stand behind. It is a game about how well you can call a season.

If you gamble and it stops being fun, help is available. In the US: 1-800-GAMBLER.

Two different kinds of number appear on this site and it is worth knowing which is which.

Market lines and win totals

Sourced from odds providers. They are what a sportsbook was offering at the moment we fetched them, they move, and ours may be stale. They are not an offer of anything.

Our own projections

Where no line has been posted — which is most games, most of the season — the spread and win probability you see are fitted by us from published win totals. They are a model’s opinion. They are frequently wrong, which is the entire reason disagreeing with them is worth points.

The college football ranking

A heuristic we fitted to twelve seasons of past selection committee rankings. It produces plausible fields. It is not the CFP selection committee, has no connection to them, and is not endorsed by them, by the NCAA, or by any conference. The committee publishes no algorithm; this is our guess at one and must never be read as authoritative.

We are not affiliated with the NFL, the NCAA, any conference, or any club. Team names and abbreviations are used to identify real teams and for no other purpose.

A universe locks at the first kickoff it is eligible for. After that its picks cannot be changed — not by you, not by us, not by asking nicely. This is enforced by the database rather than by the screen, so there is no version of it that can be worked around.

It has to work that way: a leaderboard where Week 8 can be edited on a Tuesday is not a leaderboard. Check your grid before kickoff.

A universe name is public and shows up beside other people’s. Names must be 3 to 40 characters, and usernames 3 to 20. Do not use a name that impersonates this site or one of the house benchmarks, that targets or identifies another person, or that is abusive.

Here is what actually happens, so nothing about it is a surprise:

Names are checked when you choose one

Against a list of reserved and offensive terms, before the name is saved. If it fails you are asked for another one. We never silently rename anything you made.

Anyone can report a public universe

A report does not hide anything on its own. It goes to a queue that a person reads, because a button that removed whoever was reported would be a button for removing whoever is winning.

A person decides

If a name breaks the rules we hide the universe from the leaderboard and from public pages. Its picks are not deleted and it can be put back. We record when it was hidden and the reason, on the universe itself, so the decision can be explained later rather than only remembered.

We reserve the right to remove a universe or an account outright for repeated or serious abuse. If we ever do this to you and you think we got it wrong, write to site.ykb@gmail.com and a person will read it.

Do not script the creation of universes, try to get around the rate limits, attempt to read or change data belonging to someone else, or probe the site for weaknesses. If you find a security problem, please tell us at site.ykb@gmail.com rather than using it.

This site is provided as it is, with no warranty of any kind. We do not promise it will be available, that the schedules, lines, results or scores will be correct, or that a season will finish the way the site expects.

Data comes from third parties and is sometimes wrong or late. Scoring runs on a schedule and can be delayed. Games get postponed and cancelled, and our handling of that is a judgment call we have documented and may get wrong. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising from using this site.

Features may change, and sections that are marked coming soon may never arrive. The site itself may be shut down. If we decide to shut it down we will say so on the site first and give you a reasonable chance to save anything you want to keep — but this is a free project, not a service you are owed, and nothing here is a promise that it will still be running next season.

If these terms change, the date at the top changes. Continuing to use the site after that means the new version applies.