History of the Pages and the Contest
Originally Posted October, 1998; Updated September, 2000
The picks contest started in 1990, and it had two contestants: me, and my roomate Dan Wine.
We picked mostly SEC games and a few other important games; we kept track of everything on a
piece of paper. (This was 1990, we were all using slide rules instead of PCs.) I did fairly
well until Dan realized I made my picks after he did, allowing me to selectively choose which
games to differ with him. Once he corrected that flaw, he gained a great deal of momentum
until, as far as I know, he had a better picking percentage than me every year since.
As the 90s progressed, the contest moved to email, and finally, in late 1996, to the world
wide web. At that time the web page was very simple (version 1.0); it had a grey colored brick
background and a fairly straightforward interface. It was simple, but, I like to think, very
user friendly, easy to update, and easy to use.
Once it was on the web, I was able to bring other people in. In late 1996, a few people made
picks along with Dan and me, but we were the only two with a great number of picks, and so Dan
became the first official SJS Home Page Picks Champion, with a 75% mark.
1997 came and the doors flew open. The expert panel expanded to 7 regulars: me, Dan, John
Boughter, Kelly Ciombor, Dale Helms, Kevin St. John, and the one they call Schmookie (Dan Peterson).
It was a fun year in which unexpected rivalries sprang up, and Mondays were alive with trash
talking and taunting. John secured final bragging rights, edging Dan's all-time 75% mark by
tenths of a percentage point.
In late March of 1998, I launched version 2 of the college football page. I had discovered
javascript and Adobe products, and the combination proved lethal. You can still see the remnants
of my "baroque period" on the main index of my site. Things lit up and moved around. The
flashy new look arrived in tandem with a computer program written in Visual Basic 4 (and still
in development) called "Steve St. John's Picks Page Creator". The Creator automated several tasks
involved in processing peoples picks and top 25s, allowing me to expand my operation, keeping
detailed stats on pickers and creating two computer generated characters, Homer (who always
picks the home team) and Consensus Curtis (who always sides with the majority of pickers). The automation also allowed more experts to come on
board; the number in 1998 oscillated between 11 and 15 (17 if you count the fictitious ones).
More importantly, the experts were located in several parts of the country: Maryland, Florida,
Minnesota, Illinois, Georgia, and North Carolina, bringing to the table a variety of different viewpoints
to round out the consensus poll.
In midseason of 1998, I became dissatisfied with the layout of the page; the fancy menu took
up too much room and took too long to load. So I beta tested a version 3 that had a text based
menu along the top for the main topics, and a pull down list for the subtopics. The merit of that
approach was increased speed and screenspace, but I think people had trouble with the pull down
menu. So, although I liked the pull down menu because it employed some original javascripting, I
decided to introduce the fully operational version 3 with a reversal to my simple beginnings. The
subtopic menu was a separate frame along the top and just below the main menu. I was not happy
with the amount of space it took up on the top, but I decided screen width was more important
than screen height, so I went with it.
Then came the short-lived version 4, in which I thought I had the perfect combination of
screen width, height, and navigability. Unfortunately, the icons I selected to replace the
text menu were not all that well designed, so 1999 brings on version 5. I got rid of frames
completely, devoting the entire page to menus and information. The menus are now contained in
tables tucked in the margins of the page, but they only appear on the main pages, freeing up
screen width for the tables and forms.
The 2000 version is off and running. The offseason saw the posting of my 90s Decade In Review, and in 2000 we added some new experts and
dropped a few. Two new computer players joined, Mr. Offense and Dr. Defense, who pick scores based on season team offense and team defense
statistics. The Hall Of Fame was added in 2000, and OOL index and IQ (out on a limb) became a new official statistic along with Weeks Lost.
The future? Hopefully we can add more experts in 2001 and settle on the perfect page design.
Who knows. For more history on all of these pages, as well as some links to web page design
utilities, see my main credits page; for comments,
email me at sstjo001@umaryland.edu.
--Steve St. John, ala Webmaestro, October, 1998
©SJS Designs