Rules for Football Picks 2009

Players will be assigned to one of four divisions, with up to 15 players each. Last year's champions will have the first choice on division assignments, followed by returning players and then this year's new players.

The table below summarizes the divisions and conferences.

In addition to the 9 weekly divisional games, there will also be 6 "Wild Card" games each week that all divisions will pick from. The Wild Card standings will be based only on these games.

Weekly Picks

There will be 12 weeks of regular season picks, from September 5 through November 21. Please note that not all games are on Saturdays. For games being played on Saturdays, picks are due by 12:00 noon, Eastern Time. For all other games (such as Thursday or Friday nights), picks are due before kickoff of the first game on that day.

To qualify for the 1A playoffs, you must send in your picks for at least 11 weeks of the season. Those players who make picks every week will have their worst week dropped from their won-loss record. Your final record is based on your 11 best weeks of picks.

Standings and Tie-Breaker

Standings are based on total record (division games plus wild card games), and are kept separately by division. To break ties, players will need to predict the final score of four games during the final week. The actual scores minus the predicted scores will be used to calculate "points off." If there is a tie, the winner is the player with the lowest total.

How to Calculate Points Off

Suppose three players tied for first place: A, B, and C. Suppose one of the "guess the score" games is Oregon @ Oregon St, and that the final score was 31-21, in favor of Oregon. Each of the players made the following predictions:

Player B ends up in the best position, having only 10 points added to his points off total. This process is followed for the three other games. The winner is the player with the lowest total points off on all four games. There is no penalty for "going over" on the predicted score.

Additional Tie-Breaking Rules

After eliminating all players with the highest points off total, it's possible there may still be a tie with two or more players. Here are the next tie-breaking steps:

1. Win-loss record in the four guess the score games.
2. Best record in final week of picks.
3. Best record in division games.
4. If there still is a tie at this point, both/all tied players will automatically advance to the playoffs.

Qualifying for the Playoffs

There will be 10 spots in the 1A playoffs. After the division champions automatically qualify, the rest of the spots will be filled from the standings in the wild card games. The current wild card standings will be posted on the main football page.

All players with at least 100 games (8 weeks) are eligible to make the 1AA playoffs. After the 10 spots in the 1A playoffs are filled, the remaining players are ranked by overall winning percentage. Wild Card standings will not be used to fill the 1AA spots because not all players will have sent in their picks on at least 11 weeks of the season.

For complete playoff rules, click here.