NCAA Top 25 Pickem Pools

What It Is

Challenge you and your friends to a weekly pool. Everyone predicts winners each week. View each other's picks and standings after each game.

Accrue points based on the outcome of each game. Don't worry, we do all of the calculations..

There are typically 18 to 22 games per week on the picks sheet. Except for weeks 1 and 2, we will have the games for the 25 teams in the polls in the system on Monday. Week 1, we'll have the teams in as soon as the first AP poll is released. The first AP poll is typically released in mid-to-late August. We will use the AP Poll each week. Week 1 typically has a couple of late games on Sunday and Monday, so, that delays the week 2 polls, which in turn delays when we can get the week 2 games into the system. From week 3 on, it's like clock-work, Monday mid-day is usually when the next week's games are in and available to make picks. Spreads are usually put in a day after the teams.

Occasionally, when there aren't enough teams to get 18 games, we'll look at other polls, to see if those polls include teams outside of the primary polls. Those secondary polls include: The USA Today Coaches poll, ESPN's power rankings and other polls.

 

The object of the game is to accumulate as many points as you can each week, for the entire college season. On our standings page, you can view pool standings by week or groupings of weeks or by the entire season, at any time.

The picks matrix page shows everyone's picks for each game after the picks deadline. (..don't worry, it won't show predictions while picks can still be changed..) For many pools, the picks matrix will also show in-game score updates and how those scoring changes affect player predictions in near real-time.

 

• Each week games for the nation's top 25 teams will be put into that week's picks sheet, shortly after the polls are released.
• Your poolies make picks each week.
• We keep track of game scores and calculate everyone's pool standings.
• You and your buddies check the site to see how you did.

 

For against-the-spread scoring methods, we use half-point spreads, so, there are never any ties. We've found that half-point spreads make understanding how to pick teams against the spread a lot easier. We typically get spread information from reputable outlets, like espn.com, actionnetwork.com, OddsShark.com and VegasInsider.com. Please note that games involving non-FBS teams won't typically have official spreads. In that case, the spread is up to our discretion. We do our best to research the teams involved, where the game is to be played and other key factors, before coming up with a spread. The same goes for games with teams that have key injuries, where Vegas is slow/reluctant to release a spread. This scenario doesn't typically happen very often, but, when a key player, like a starting QB or primary RB sustains an injury and there is no information available about whether that player will play the next game or not, then the release of the spread for that game may be delayed several days. In the event that a spread for a game is delayed a few days, we may intervene and come up with a spread, ourselves. We prefer not to do that, but, if a spread is not announced by Wednesday night or Thursday morning, before a Saturday game, we'll put one in there.

Please note, that once a spread is put into the system, it can't be changed, because people may have already made their picks based on that spread.

We tweet/post new games and spreads, amongst other things, via our twitter account and our facebook page. Follow us to stay abreast of the latest changes.

 

Tie Breaker:

Total Points of Last Game of the Week

Tie breakers help determine weekly winners, as well as season long pool champions. The season long tie breaker is the sum of all of your tie breaker predictions, for each week, compared to the sum of the actual values for each week.
ie. [Total of all actual tie breaker values] - [Total of your predicted tie breaker values] = [Season long tie breaker difference]

Example, using a 3 week season:

Tie Breaker Values

Week	Player A's Predictions	Player B's Predictions	Actual Values
1	41	39	42
2	35	21	38
3	65	30	30
Total:	141	90	110
Difference:	(141 - 110) = 21	(110 - 90) = 20

Findings:

• Player A's tie breaker predictions were closer than Player B's predictions in weeks 1 and 2.
• Player B's tie breaker predictions were closer than Player A's predictions in week 3.
• Player B's season-long tie breaker was closer to the actual amount, than Players A's season-long tie breaker.

Conclusion:

In the example above, Player B would have won the season-long tie breaker battle, even though Player A was closer in 2 out of the 3 weeks.

 

The college football season usually starts a week before the NFL season, the last week of August: Wednesday, September 4, 2024.

Our college pickem pools start with the first game of the season, but, you can start your pool at any time. You can choose to enter player picks for missed weeks or skip any number of missed weeks for the final pool standings.

 

• You choose how many weeks to compare, for the season standings. In essence, you can give "mulligan" weeks to each of your pool's players. For example, if you choose to compare 12 weeks in a 14 week pool, the system will drop each person's worst 2 weeks. Joe's worst 2 weeks might be weeks 7 and 8, while Jane's worst 2 weeks might be 3 and 10. The system will drop those worst weeks for those players, when calculating season totals.
• You choose your pool's weekly picks deadline. Depending on the pool, there are typically 3 options: 1-floating, 2-first game of the week and 3-hard picks deadline of your choosing; ie. Friday at noon ET.

Pool administrators can abdicate their admin prividges, to avoid any chance or thought of impropriety, from other poolies. We ask that the pool administrator send us an email requesting us to remove his admin priviledges after all the settings have been configured and all expected players have joined. This is so no other admin tasks are required.

 

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