Each week you pick one NFL team you think will win. If they win, you survive to the next week. If they lose, your entry is done — there are no second lives.
A tie counts as a win. Your entry survives.
An entry may use each of the 32 teams only once all season. Once you have used the Chiefs, they are gone from that entry's board for good.
If you have more than one entry, they are completely independent. Using the Chiefs on entry #1 does not touch entry #2.
There is no auto-assign for a forgotten pick. If you have no pick in when the last game of the week kicks off, the entry is eliminated.
You will get several reminder emails, including a final warning 90 minutes before the deadline. Steve can also enter a pick for you if you text or call him before it locks.
Each pick locks at the kickoff of that specific game, not at a fixed weekly deadline. You can change your mind freely up until then. Pick the Thursday game and you are locked Thursday; pick a Monday game and you have until Monday.
All times on the site are shown in Central.
No one — not other players, not the grid, not the popularity page — can see any pick for the current week until the week's final game kicks off. It is all or nothing at that moment, so that Thursday pickers never leak information to Sunday pickers.
Once a week is revealed it stays visible for the rest of the season.
If your game is cancelled outright and will not be played, the team you picked is returned to your pool — it does not count as used. You are automatically assigned the biggest remaining favorite among games that have not yet kicked off, and emailed immediately.
You may override that assignment with any other team you have not used whose game has not started. If there is nothing left to assign, your entry survives the week and no team is used up. A game merely moved within the same week is not a cancellation — the kickoff time just changes.
Last entry standing wins. If every remaining entry is eliminated in the same week, those entries share it.
All money is handled offline by the pool organiser. This site never takes a payment; it just tracks whether an entry is marked paid. Proceeds benefit the Gillespie Coal Museum.