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.
A team on a bye week has no game to win, so it cannot be picked that week. The board groups those teams separately, and they are back to normal the following week.
If you have more than one entry, they are completely independent. Using the Chiefs on entry #1 does not touch entry #2.
You can pick as far ahead as you like. The week selector across the top of the pick board opens any week of the season, and a pick you make in September for Week 12 counts exactly the same as one made that week. Filling weeks in early is the surest way not to lose an entry to a forgotten click — and it lets you plan which teams to spend where.
A team you have lined up for a later week shows as Picked wk 12 on every other board. That is a reservation, not a spend: change that week's pick and the team is free again. Once its game kicks off it becomes Used wk 12 and is gone from that entry for the season.
There is no auto-assign for a forgotten pick. If you have no pick in when the picks lock, 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.
Picks lock every Sunday at 11:59am Central. Until then you can change your mind as often as you like. After it, nothing about that week can be changed — including by people whose team plays on Sunday night or Monday.
One thing carries on top of that deadline: you cannot pick a team whose game has already kicked off. Thursday night's teams are off the board from Thursday evening, whoever won.
That rule runs both ways. Once the game you picked kicks off, your pick is final. Take a Thursday night team and your week is settled Thursday evening, not Sunday — everybody else carries on changing their mind until 11:59am.
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 picks lock. Everybody's picks appear together at 12:00 Sunday, a minute after the deadline, so a Thursday picker can never leak anything to somebody still deciding.
Once a week is revealed it stays visible for the rest of the season.
If your game is canceled 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 the cancellation comes so late that every other game that week has already kicked off, there is no team left to give you. In that case the week is simply written off for your entry: you survive it, and no team is used up — the one you had picked stays available for a later week.
A game merely moved within the same week is not a cancellation — the kickoff time just changes, and your pick moves with it.
Last entry standing wins. If every remaining entry is eliminated in the same week, those entries share it.
Entries are $10 each. Half of every dollar goes to the Gillespie Coal Museum and half to the winner.
You can pay by Venmo, PayPal, cash or check, or the museum's donation page — the ways to pay are here. This site never takes a payment and never sees your card. It only records whether an entry has been marked paid, which Steve sets by hand once the money arrives.
Your entry is live and your picks count either way. Nobody is removed from the pool over payment — if you are behind, you are behind, and it stays between you and Steve.