Every year before the Super Bowl, without fail, we ceremoniously operated a friendly betting tradition on the game's final score. We scrambled to put up a grid on a large paper sheet, drawing numbers in the margins and finishing up just about fifteen minutes before kickoff. We knew the drill: somewhat square lines, a number or two missed on lines or columns, salsa and guacamole threatening the whole setup...
Championship Squares started with a very simple idea: replace that improvised paper grid with something reusable, shareable, and more fun to use. It works especially well for the Super Bowl, but I went a little further and added hockey, baseball, and the Olympics too! It is one of those low-stakes games that somehow becomes very exciting the moment the score changes.
The motivation was very practical. I was tired of recreating the same thing every year, but I also wanted an excuse to spend more time with modern AI-assisted tooling, GitHub-based versioning, a cleaner VS Code setup, and a proper documented release. If a recurring annoyance can become a reusable project, that is usually enough reason for me to build it.
To be honest, I still need to work on my betting skills because I lost. This year, again... I still can't wait until next year's big game to play another one!
If you want to try it, reuse it, or just look through the code, the repo is here: https://github.com/bilbilivo/championship-squares