This is a guest post by John Liston: sports fanatic, Boston College junior, Massachusetts native,  and all-around cool dude.

The World cup hadn’t even progressed past the group stage before the excuses started to pile up for those whose predictions and brackets failed to come to fruition.

“Who could have possibly predicted that the French, of all people, would throw in the towel and seemingly surrender as soon as the tournament started?”

“Nobody told me that the English players aren’t allowed to see their wives or girlfriends during the tournament, how can they be expected to perform under such stress?”

“Everybody knows that the officiating has been so bad it has completely changed the tournament, how can I be expected to pick the correct winners if the game is rigged?”

And for those of us participating in world cup pools whose members included those of the opposite sex…

“Why would I pick Brazil to win, their jerseys are that hideous yellow color, nobody wins anything looking like that.”

With these excuses started floating around in mass only two and a half weeks into the month long competition, I have an unwelcome caveat for the winners of the thousands of world cup pools filled out across the country. Good luck getting paid.

Anybody who has ever won a World Cup pool, a March Madness bracket challenge, or a fantasy sports league can tell you that when the competition is over and a winner is declared, all of a sudden all of the enthusiasm for the idea of betting ten, twenty, or however many dollars on the competition has suddenly evaporated. If you haven’t already collected all of the money and put it in a safe place in organizer’s desk drawer then you’re never going to see all of that money.

This is where you run into all of the previously listed excuses as to why some unforeseen variable made the entire competition null and void because although you managed to win, every loser has a referee, injury, or other circumstance which they believe warrants not paying up. Especially in the world cup, where most peoples’ bracket rivaled BP in their performance record.

This puts the chances of collecting somewhere in between Notre Dame Football living up to the hype for once and Ohio State ever toppling an SEC power.

How do you go about running a successful World Cup pool then? Well conventional wisdom has always dictated that all of the money be collected up front and kept in a “safe” location. If your friends are anything like mine, then this can become a much more arduous task than it sounds, as nobody is ever trustworthy enough to look after all the money.

The vicious cycle of excuses and distrust has led to many a pool winner going unpaid and countless arguments raging over debts and fairness. In the past, family members and neutral parties have always offered somewhat of a safe haven but there’s an even better solution out there: WePay.