ProTrade.com

I'm pleased to announce today that Card Chronicle has struck a partnership with ProTrade.com that will enable us to be the exclusive U of L contributor to the site.

ProTrade is an online sports market that that provides an Athlete Stock Market in which users can buy and sell shares of professional NFL, NBA, and MLB on a simulated stock market using ProTrade currency.

How it works is each user is allotted $25,000 which they can use to buy shares of teams. Just like in the Stock Market, the better teams cost more, and the goal is to buy low and sell high.

For college basketball, a team's end of the year value is calculated as follows:

$3 for each Div I regular season win
$5 for each conference tournament win
$5 for each NIT Tournament win
$20 for each NCAA Tournament win
$10 for qualifying for the NCAA Tournament
$10 for making the Final Four
$10 for making it to the Championship game
$10 for winning the Championship

You can check out Louisville's value as well as play around with their predict a price widget here. If the price you come up with after entering your predictions for the rest of the season is higher than what the Cards are trading for, it means they're probably a good buy.

I went with what I deemed was the most likely scenario for the rest of the season (21 regular season wins, a conference tournament victory, an NCAA Tournament bid and a first-round loss) and the price was $27 more than their current trading price. So it appears that Louisville is grossly underpriced at the moment, and that now may be the best time to strike, especially if you think the Cards have a legitimate shot at winning at least one game in the Big Dance.

I think this is a cool thing for all you business-types who consider yourself pretty knowledgeable as far as sports go, as well as the sports fan who has abolutely zero Stock Market saviness (me). So check it out and let me know what you think.