🏈 Fred's Follies Pool Rules
NFL Playoff Winning-Margin Prediction Pool
1. How the Pool Works
Players predict the winning team and winning margin for each NFL playoff game.
The goal is to accumulate the fewest penalty points throughout the playoffs.
2. Playoff Rounds
- Wild Card Round
- Divisional Round
- Conference Championships
- Super Bowl
Players make their predictions for each round using the Make Picks page.
3. Making Your Picks
- Select the team you believe will win each game.
- Enter your predicted winning margin.
- Save your picks before the round's lockout.
- You may change your picks until the lockout.
4. Scoring — Correct Winner
If you correctly predict the winning team, your penalty points equal the difference between your predicted margin and the actual winning margin.
You pick the Chiefs to win by 3.
The Chiefs win by 7.
Your penalty is |7 − 3| = 4 points.
Predict the correct team and exact winning margin, and you receive 0 penalty points!
5. Scoring — Wrong Winner
If you predict the wrong winning team, your penalty is calculated as:
Example:
You pick the Saints to win by 3.
The Chiefs win by 7.
Your penalty is
3 + 7 + 4 =
14 points.
6. Standings
All penalty points from finalized games are added together.
The player with the lowest total penalty points is ranked first.
Standings update when the administrator enters final game results.
7. Super Bowl Tiebreaker
Players predict the combined total points scored by both teams in the Super Bowl.
If players finish with the same penalty-point total, the prediction closest to the actual combined Super Bowl score wins the tiebreaker.
Actual Super Bowl combined score: 42
Player A predicts 44 (off by 2).
Player B predicts 48 (off by 6).
Player A wins the tiebreaker.
8. Pick Deadlines
Each playoff round has its own lockout time, set by the administrator.
Picks may be entered or edited before that round's deadline. Once locked, picks can no longer be changed by players.
9. Viewing Other Players' Picks
Other players' predictions become visible on the View All Picks page after the corresponding round's lockout.
10. Missing Picks
Players are responsible for submitting all their predictions before each playoff round's lockout.
After the round's lockout has passed, the administrator may generate replacement picks for ALL players with missing picks at once.
For every missing game, the system will randomly select one of the two teams and assign a predicted winning margin of 50 points.
These replacement picks will be scored using the same rules as regular predictions. This allows players who missed the deadline to remain in the competition.