How to Create a Season Long Football Pool
The months of September through January are a time of year that football fans throughout the country hold sacred. Every Sunday football fans are glued to their televisions to watch that week's NFL games, along with Monday nights. Many football fans enjoy making the football season a little more competitive by entering football pools across the country. If you would like to create a smaller football pool for you and your friends to compete in, there are many things you should consider.
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Instructions
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1
Find a group of friends that are interested in joining a football pool that will last the entire NFL season. Let each pool member know that he will be responsible for submitting his picks on a weekly basis.
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2
Determine if the pool will be based on picking the winners of football games with or without using the point spread. If the league will use the point spread, decide when the point spread will be determined for that week's picks. Most leagues use the point spreads listed in the "USA Today" newspaper on Wednesday for that week's games.
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Decide the entry fee and prize structure. Most NFL pools involve an entry fee, and prizes are awarded to the player that most accuratly predicts the results of the games. As the leader of your NFL pool, decide if there will be weekly prizes, end-of-season prizes or both. Decide how many positions in the standings will receive cash or gift-card prizes for each week and the final season standings.
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Choose to run the pool online or manually. The easiest way is to run it online, as there are many websites that will compute the league standings for you each week for free. Two popular ones are ESPN.com and Sportsline.com.
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Determine the deadline for submitting NFL game picks each week. Most leagues have players submit their picks no later than noon eastern time if the league is using an online program to run the league. If the league is run manually, it is recommended that each player must submit their picks no later than midnight Saturday night for that week.
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Determine the procedure for breaking ties for weekly or season-long prizes. Typically, the method used for weekly picks is to have players choose the combined score for both teams as the Monday night game, submitted with his or her weekly picks. For season-long tie breakers, many leagues split the prizes for each position among players that are tied.
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Send weekly and season-long standings and statistics to the members of the league on Tuesday evening of each week. This way, each player can see how he or she is doing in the pool. Most of the free online pool programs will have these standings updated on Tuesday mornings.
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Tips & Warnings
If there is a Thursday night game one week, change your deadline for picks to 1 hour before the kickoff of the Thursday night game. If there is no Thursday night game but there is a Saturday game, the picks should be turned in 1 hour before the kickoff time for the first game that Saturday.
If a player fails to submit his or her picks on time for a week, determine the penalty in advance so there are no arguments. Most pools will decide to give that player either all of the favored teams based on the point spread that week, or all of the home teams. This must be included in the pool rules to avoid arguments.
