Rules for Football Picks 2021

New Rules for Divisions

Beginning in 2017, there are three divisions: Legends, Veterans and Starters. The Legends and Veterans divisions can have up to 15 total players each.

Division Changes
Division assignments are not permanent. At the end of each season, the Starters division champion will be promoted to the Veterans division, and the Veterans division champion will be promoted to the Legends division. In addition, the last place player in each division will be re-assigned to the lower division at the end of the season.

Taking a Year Off
Players who miss an entire season will be re-assigned to the Starters division if they return the following season or later. In addition, all new players will start their Picks Club career in the Starters division.

Players will make predictions on 15 games each week. There will be 6 "Wild Card" games and 9 Division games. Regular season standings will be based on winning percentage in all games. The Wild Card standings will be based only on Wild Card games.

Weekly Picks

There will be 12 weeks of regular season picks, from September 1 through November 17. To qualify for the 1A playoffs, you must send in your picks for at least 11 weeks of the season. The 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.

Not all games are played on Saturdays. Picks are due before kickoff, regardless of whether they are played on Thursday, Friday or Saturday.

Standings and Tie-Breaker

Standings are based on total record (division games plus wild card games). 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. The three division champions qualify for the playoffs first. After these three players are in the playoffs, the player in each division with the best record in division games only will also advance. The final 4 spots will go to the top 4 players in the Wild Card standings. 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.