Some of you may have already heard of ProTrade, which has had its "sports stock market" up and running for some time now, at least with respect to the NFL, MLB, and the NBA. Here's the way it works: ProTrade sets a price for an initial public offering of that player or team. Traders then buy and sell players or teams, and the prices for the players move up and down accordingly.
ProTrade's NCAA trading pit is currently in beta. Each team's page includes various info about that team, including recent posts from blogs covering that team. Rocky Top Talk has been selected to be the exclusive ProTrade Tennessee Volunteers blog. We'll still be here, of course. ProTrade will simply include a link over to the blog or pick up a portion of our feed.
You really ought to head on over there and check them out. As I write this, the Vols' price is $103.02. ProTrade has a price estimator that you can use to estimate the value of the team based on how you think it will finish out the season. My forced estimate includes the following factors: 21 regular-season wins, two conference tournament wins, an invitation to the NCAA Tournament, and 2 NCAA Tournament wins. Those factors spit out an estimated price of $123, so, being the complete homer that I am, I bought as much as I could (I was limited to 36 shares for some reason, I guess so I wouldn't dominate the market right now.)
They also have an NCAA Basketball Challenge that will start on February 20. First prize is a $100 Amazon Gift Card.
I have to admit that I was a bit disinterested in this whole thing at first figuring it was just another fantasy-ish game that I don't have time to play. But once I started fiddling around over there, I really started getting how much fun it could be.
So do yourself a favor and at least check them out. Register for an account and mess around a little bit before you decide whether it's worth your time. I'm finding that it is, and I hope you will, too.
Buy! Buy! Buy!
Update [2007-2-17 17:52:53 by Joel]: Sell! Sell! Sell!