The Friday Clarification: Retweet, Refer Friends, Get Winnings

1. Two extremely easy ways to get bonus winnings
2. Shannon-less Illini face stiffest test yet vs. Purdue
3. Hurley, Pitino being assholes incidentally reveals more interesting Big East rule
4. Random Player: Who is Shahada Wells and why should you care
5. Updated Week 1 card with extra, added markets

1. Refer, Retweet, Rejoice

Robn as a brand is starting from scratch, including on the socials. We need your help in scaling. Let's start on the Tweety.

If you retweet an @PlayRobn tweet, you get 25 free bonus winnings. It's that simple.

Limit one like/retweet per week over the first four weeks of the contest (now - Jan. 27). All winnings will be added to contestants' winnings totals in week 5.

Another way to get points: Refer friends to play. As several of you have already done, refer a friend, have a friend drop your name when they fill out the form, and get 100 free bonus winnings.

Limit five referrals per contestant. Referee must sign up prior to Jan. 27th at Noon ET. Again, all winnings will be added to contestants' winnings totals in week 5.

2. Ill Lini

Somewhat glossed over during the holiday break was the clumsy suspension of Illini star Terrence Shannon Jr. after he was charged with rape last week stemming from an incident in September.

This is the best player in the country to lose significant time this season. The loss is real, even if recent Illinois results don't show it; Torvik and KenPom have Shannon as the 6th best player in the country, while EvanMiya rates him 17th.

Illinois goes up tonight against arguably the best team in the country in Purdue in its first big test without Shannon. We opened Purdue as a 9-point favorite before the markets did and got the number right on – but it's since moved up publicly to 10.5 or 11.

Lucky for you, our number (and all of our numbers) stay static.

3. Val Ackerman's Special Secret Scheduling Committee

St. John's plays several games per year at Madison Square Garden instead of their on-campus arena, due to a combination of pageantry, tradition, and because they believe their brand to be worthy of a world's-greatest-arena stage, not a 5,000 seat arena deep in Queens. It's certainly not due to talent (this year not withstanding).

Red Storm coach Rick Pitino couldn't help but opine that next year, his team would face UConn at St. John's on-campus arena, and not the Garden. Ostensibly this was to try to cut the Big East's flagship team down to size.

UConn coach Dan Hurley then decided to respond with the opinion that Pitino feels the need to "punch up" because UConn is so successful. Whatever - this is douchebag fake controversy for the dumb media age.

Lost amidst the two guys behaving like each thought the other cut in front of them while in line at the Boston DMV was the nugget from the New York Post that Big East commissioner Val Ackerman can mandate at her discretion that the "highest-profile" games are played at public locations, and that a school can't move a contest to or from a major public venue.

There is a Big East policy that states that if a school plays more than two home games at a public venue, the commissioner has the power to mandate that the two highest-profile games be played at that location. 

“The host school may not move a contest for competitive reasons,” the policy states. 

One wonders if other conferences have this policy, and how it could benefit other conferences looking for increased exposure and promotion. Instead of playing its "premier brand" matchup between Arizona-UCLA at 11:30pm ET in a sleepy Pauley Pavilion on a Saturday early afternoon, imagine if the Pac-12 commissioner could choose to move that game to T-Mobile Arena or the Staples Center in prime time and really blow it out...

Oh, wait.

4. Shahada Great Reason For This Post

Random Player is a segment for this year that looks at a random player in college basketball that might not be on the national radar, but that you should know.

Introducing a walking advertisement for the transfer portal: McNeese State's Shahada Wells. We said above that Terrance Shannon Jr. is Torvik's 6th ranked player nationally. Shahada is 5th. Not something you normally see out of the Southland Conference.

Wells came to the Cowboys by way of TCU, where he put up just five points a game last season. This year he's all-everything, and led the Cowboys to an 11-2 record and wins over Michigan and VCU. Those wins mostly came without McNeese's new coach, former LSU coach and favorite FBI bribery-probe-target Will Wade.

(They also logged wins over something just called "Biblical Studies," as well as "Mississippi University for Women," which... I have questions).

The reason why Wells is so remarkable is not just that McNeese State could be a pesky 14-seed in a few months, but the unprecedented overnight improvement he's given the school.

This year, they're right around a top 100 team and are head and shoulders above the rest of the Southland. That might sound like nothing, until you realize how historically ass they've been: the school's highest KenPom rating in the past 10 years is 290th. Most years they've been sub-300.

Root for Wells and the Cowboys this season. It's been a long time coming.

Look out for other special recurring Robn segments as the season rolls on, such as Fairy-Tale Takedown, where we cast doubt on the message of various children's stories through an adult lens (I'm coming for you, Jemima Puddle-Duck) and Film School, where we give some of the most confusing and awe-inspiring videos on the internet the analytical breakdown they deserve.

5. Reward Those Who Wait

The weekly picks card will come out every week on Thursday mornings. It will have two two-sided markets on each game, usually around who will win and around the total amount of points scored.

However, we will add additional markets to the card as we get closer to the Saturday Noon ET submission deadline. For example... (hey, here's a tweet you can retweet!):

Below is the Week 1 card where these type of extra markets are already added or will be added for some games.

For example, we've got UNC's Armando Bacot to score over 14 points, we've got a UConn to win and both teams to score over 64 points dual market, and there will surely be some three-point silliness in Colorado State-Utah State, with more extra markets to come.

All entries due by 9am PT / Noon ET Saturday.

If you miss a week – no sweat. Come back the next week.

Week 1 Card (Jan. 6th)

Each week, contestants are granted 1,000 in Available Free Play Points (AFPP) Contestants must allocate all 1,000 points across one or more of the following markets All selections must be submitted by 9am PT / Noon ET on the Saturday to which the games pertain Contestants’ goal is to generate “winnings” by making successful selections The amount of winnings generated by successful selections are determined by the amount of AFPP placed on the selection, multiplied by the multiplier at the end of each pick (e.g. if Arizona wins, an allocation of 100 points on “Arizona to win - 1.25x” would net 125 winnings, or 100 x 1.25) Official contest rules can be found here In order to enter, make sure you subscribe here

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