The 2012 NFL Season is upon us and so is the 2012 NinersNation.com Prediction Contest. I wanted to take the time to post the rules and guidelines before the season begina. For those chomping at the bit, the first prediction post should arrive early this week.

Please take the time to read the rules and ask any questions you might have. Good luck to everyone this season.

Prediction Contest Rules & Guidelines

1. Each week 6 NFL games are picked for the prediction contest. 49ers game, Sunday Night Football Game, Monday Night Football Game, one Sunday Morning game, one Sunday Afternoon game and one additional game. Depending upon whether the 49ers game falls on Sunday or Monday Night or the 49ers have a bye week additional games may be picked ensure the week total is 6 games.
2. If the 49ers game falls upon a Thursday Night Game we will provide an optional bonus game to predict for the week. Can either predict a score for the Thursday Night 49ers game or predict the score of the bonus game but you cannot predict both. Scoring will be treated separately for each game.
3. Prediction Scores must be submitted before game kickoff time or they will not be counted. 10AM PST for Sunday Morning games, 1:15PM PST for Sunday Afternoon games, 5:30PM PST for Sunday Night Games and 5:30PM PST for Monday Night. The time-stamp of your comment counts as your prediction entry time. May stagger your predictions throughout the week or change your original prediction but please do so using the reply button to your original comment.
4. David Fucillo will typically begin the Prediction Contest thread starting on Wednesday of each.
5. Try your best to follow the Prediction Game format posted as it cuts down on scoring errors.
6. Scoring Results will typically be posted Tuesday the following week.
7. If you believe an error occurred scoring your prediction pleased a post a comment describing the discrepancy in the Scoring Results thread. Any score changes resulting from a scoring error will be posted the following week.
8. You may not submit the same prediction score more than twice in one week. This rule is specially designed to curtail 24-17, 23-17, 20-17 block prediction scores. We are also leaving this up to our judgment in case anyone wants to submit 24-17 for two scores than 23-17 for another two scores, etc. Predict to the best of your ability and don't try to game the game.
9. Each week the Scoring Result post will announce the Top 5 winners of the week.
10. At the end of the NFL Regular Season we will announce the cumulative score winner for the Prediction Contest
11. In addition the Top 16 Regular Season cumulative score winners will face-off in playoff contest predicting the NFL Playoffs. The bottom 4 contestants will eliminated each week until we crown a Prediction Contest Champion at the conclusion of the Super Bowl. Those players not included in the playoff pool are invited to play in a Prediction Redemption pool during the playoff.
12. Anyone with a NinersNation.com account is invited play and can join at anytime.

There may be prizes this season but don't hold us to this.

Example of Prediction Format

I've posted the formatting rules required for posting your results after the jump. Please read over that (it's fairly short) so we can have consistency in the posting. All times are pacific and you are not required to predict every game, but obviously it helps your chances of winning to predict all the games. If you forget to pick the Sunday morning games, you can always predict whatever games remain on the slate.

Once again, please review the formatting rules after the jump before posting your results.

NY Giants @ New England - Sunday 2/5 3:30pm

IMPORTANT RULE
We implemented this rule last season and it seemed to make things easier for us. Previously, folks had just posted their scores in any particular fashion, although howtheyscored had made requests for a specific format. Given the amount of time and effort howtheyscored has to put into determining the final results, I am implementing a requirement for how to format your scores (based on the spreadsheet howtheyscored has created). If you fail to follow this format, any incorrectly formatted scores for the week will be disqualified. The format is "Team A @ Team B: A score - B score." That basically is visitor @ home: visitor score - home score." Here's an example of how to do it:

Using NY Giants @ New England below, if you think New England will win 24-14, here's how it needs to appear:

NY Giants @ New England: 14 - 24

If you think the NY GIants will win 24-14, it needs to appear as this:

NY Giants @ New England: 24 - 14

If you'd like you can bold the winner (NY Giants @ New England : 14 - 24), but that is not required (although probably a good backup in case you reversed the score by accident.

If you make a mistake in the formatting I'll reply to your score reminding you to correct it. To correct it, simply reply to your picks and post them in the correct format. Do not post your scores again at the bottom of the thread. I'll make sure and include these directions each week so people do not forgot and lose out on points.

If anybody has any questions at all about this, or anything related to the contest, let me know (ninersnation@gmail.com) and I'll answer them.

Scoring Explained

I'm thinking a short flash video explaining the scoring process will work best. I'll work on this. In the meantime read the description below and if you still don't understand this convoluted description than just keep playing along.

Your prediction has these same three components as the actual game score.

1) If you predict the correct winner for an individual game, we will score your prediction against the actual game. If you predict the incorrect winner for an individual game, your prediction will not be scored.

2) Ideally, you will predict the exact point differential of the actual game. Say, for example, this is 45. If you predict a score with a PD of 14, the difference between your predicted PD and the actual PD is 0 (14 - 14 = 0). The worse your prediction, the greater that difference becomes. Therefore, the closer the difference is to zero, the better.

3) Ideally, you will predict the exact point total of the actual game. Say, for example, this is 65. If you predict a score with a PT of 65, the difference between your predicted PT and the actual PT is 0 (65 - 65 = 0). The worse your prediction, the greater that difference becomes. Therefore, the closer the difference is to zero, the better.

So, assuming that you predict the correct winner of the individual game, we simply add the difference between your predicted and the actual PD to the difference between your predicted and the actual PT. The closer this total is to zero, the better your prediction is. A zero exactly will always be a perfect prediction.

pPD = Predicted Point Differential
aPD = Actual Point Differential
pPT = Predicted Point Total
aPT = Actual Point Total
x = Subscore

|pPD - aPD| + |pPT - aPT| = x

That total becomes your subscore for each individual game. These subscores are then ranked, and the five best (including ALL ties) are awarded points. Perfect predictions are awarded 10 points. If the highest subscore for a particular game is not a perfect prediction, it is awarded 5 points. Points then follow in descending order, so that all of the second best predictions get 4 points, the third best all get 3 points, and so on.