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A long time ago it was decided to protect each player's picks page with an 8 character password. It's a bit of overkill, admittedly, but it feels secure, and so we continue on using such. To keep things simple, I will contact members before the season begins to get passwords where necessary, or confirm existing ones for the memory-addled.
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The NFL football season is 18 weeks in length, and the entry fee is $180 for the season or, if it sounds better to you, merely $10 per week. This fee also covers the cost of operating this furshlugginer website. In addition to the regular win/loss pool with weekly and year end prizes, there's also two side pools: You pick the team you positively, absolutely think is guranteed to win that week, irregardless of the spread, and you also select the team you think is positively, absolutely going to crush its opponent pointwise.
We will have a total Pool kitty of $4,680 CAD this year. Of that, $2,340 is split eighteen ways to the Weekly Winners; $800 or $400 each goes to the two Side Pool Winners; and the remaining $1,540 is divided amongst the top three finishers for the season as outlined below.
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Each week you select a winner - against the Yahoo! Sports and/or FOX Sports NFL spread - for each of 13 - 14 (during bye week) or 16 games, as well as the total points for the Monday Night Game. Note that if there is more than one game being played on Monday Night, the final game will be used for the tiebreaker. The person with the most number of games correctly picked against the spread - and using the Monday Night Game total points as a tiebreaker - wins the Weekly Pool prize of $130. If two or more players remain tied even after calculating the Monday Night total points then we use the PRICE IS RIGHT rule: If one player is three points over and another three points under the over/under, the person under will beat the person over. If we still remain tied after this (which, BTW, has never happened) then we go to, in order of need: Highest Big Winners Total (for the week in question ONLY); then Strike or No Strike in Winners Pool (for the week in question ONLY); then Total Points in Season prior to the week in question (because that week's points are redundant). If, after all this, against every conceivable odd, they are STILL tied, then the Baby Jesus™ wants it to be and they will split the week. Amen.
A push occurs if the point differential from any single game results in exactly matching its point-spread. Eg, if the spread is Oakland over Denver by 7, and Oakland wins by 7 points, it is a push, and the game does not count either for you or against you - for all intents and purposes, that game ceases to exist as far as determining wins and losses for the week.
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At the end of the season, the total number of games correctly picked against the spread is tallied, and prizes are awarded to the top THREE members:
FIRST PLACE wins $800 SECOND PLACE wins $470
THIRD PLACE wins $270
Each week - if you're still alive - you'll select one team that you are absolutely, positively certain will win their game. The point spread is irrelevant for this side pool - the team only has to win their game. The catch is, you can only pick that team once during the entire season - ie, if in week one you select Green Bay as a guaranteed win, you cannot select Green Bay again for the remainder of the season. If you guess right, you continue on: if you guess wrong, you get a strike against you. THREE STRIKES and you are out. The Winner is the last member standing alive in the pool OR the member with the fewest strikes against them. The winner gets $400 paid out at the end of the year. If, at the end of the season, there are two or more members with the same lowest number of strikes, then the $400 will be split amongst them.
Each week you will pick one team that you think will win by a large margin as compared to the official point spread on the game. You may choose any team you like and as many times as you like. The difference between the actual total points scored and the point spread will be the amount added to your score. For example, say you pick the New England Patriots who are favourites by 16 points over the Browns. If the Pats fail to cover the spread (regardless of whether they actually win or lose the game) you get ZERO points. If the Pats do cover the spread - say they win by 28 points then you get 28 - 16 = 12 points added to your total. If a team is the underdog, instead of subtracting the point spread from the total, you add it (Negative integers and all that eggheaded stuff) So if you pick the Cleveland Browns in that game, where they are underdogs by 16 points, and they win by 10 points, you get 10 + 16 = 26 points added to your total. Note that the underdog still has to win their game - you cannot get the points if the team you pick loses, regardless of whether they are favorite or underdog. This rule change is geared towards rewarding with a point-spread bonus the risk of choosing an underdog, and punishing with a point-spread penalty the somewhat less-daring option of clinging to the favorites.
Hopefully this will eliminate the Patriot Phenomenon - otherwise known as "How Tad Pogan Won the Side-Pool" - in which padlocking oneself to the Pats was the way a select group ran the table at the pool whilst the rest of us dropped like dead Tse Tse flies. And since no one's score can be lower than zero, you have a much better chance of clawing back into the pool this year by making risky but rewarding picks. The Winner of this pool collects $400. If, at the end of the season, there are two or more members tied for the highest total, then the $400 will be split amongst them.
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The deadline for entering picks is 5 minutes before kickoff of the first game day of the current week; as of this year (2012), the NFL has changed the schedule such that every week of the season there is at least one Thursday Night game. This means that the picks cutoff for almost every week will be 5:30PM on the Thursday of that week. Email reminders will be sent on early weeks to make sure the picks get in.
Here's the scoop on missed picks: you received the lowest total right for the week based upon those who actually bothered to make their picks. Then, you subtract another one from that, and that's your weekly total. Also, you get an automatic strike in the Weekly Winners Side Pool, and a 0 for the week in the Big Winners Side Pool. Ouch! Dude, don't be missing yer picks!
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I think this is pretty fair - it doesn't cataclysmically ruin the rest of your seaon and the chance of finishing in the top four, but you can't profit from the random picks for that week either.
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