How it works
Pick one team a week to win its game outright. Not to cover a spread — to win. Get it right and you are through to next week. Get it wrong and your run is over for the season.
The catch, and the whole game: you may use a team once. Spending Texas Tech in September is a week you cannot spend them in November.
Big 12 teams only
The card shows every game a Big 12 team plays, opponent and all — but the team you pick has to be one of the sixteen. The visitors are there so you can see who your team is up against, not to be spent.
The reason is the only reason that matters here: a pick has to cost you something. Spending BYU costs you BYU for the eleven other weeks they play. Spending a non-conference visitor costs nothing, because they play a Big 12 team once all season and never appear again. Left open, the whole pool would be survived on borrowed opponents, and nobody's roster would ever run thin.
The spread plays no part
It is shown beside each game, because it is the best one-number guess at who wins and by how much, and you would want to know. It has nothing to do with whether your pick survives. A three-point favorite that wins by four is exactly as good as a thirty-point favorite that wins by four — one of those covered and one did not, and the pool does not care which.
A team is used once a season
Once a week locks with your pick on it, that team is spent whether it won or lost. The one exception is a game that is never played: a canceled or abandoned game is void, and a voided week hands the team back for you to use again.
Missing a week ends your run
Once you have made your first pick you are in, and every week after that needs one. A week that locks with no pick from you is the same as a loss. There is no submit button — a pick saves the moment you choose it — but there is no reminder either, so the week the slate locks while you are away is the week it ends.
You can join whenever you like
Weeks before your first pick did not happen for you — there is no catching up to do and nothing counted against you before you arrived. Two things follow from joining late, and both are knowable before you sign up.
Join late and the chalk is already spent
A survivor pool gets hard in November for one reason: everyone burned the safe teams in September. Somebody walking in at week six with a completely fresh roster would not be playing the same game as the people who have been picking around five spent teams since August.
So you arrive having already spent the biggest favorite of every week you missed. Join at week six and the week one through five chalk is gone from your board — the same teams the careful players spent first. If two weeks shared a favorite, the second week costs you the next biggest instead, so the handicap is always exactly one team per week missed.
It is worked out from the posted lines, which are frozen when the slate is published and never change afterwards. That means you can see the exact price before you join, and nobody can argue about it later.
To play for the season, be in by week 6
Entry never closes, but the leaderboard does. Almost everybody is out by December, so without a cutoff one person could join in the last week, win once, be the only run still alive, and take the season on a single pick.
Enter by week 6 and you are on the leaderboard. Enter after it and you play the same game under the same handicap, and the pool shows your run — you are just not in the running for the season. Joining in November is for the run, not the title.
This is about when you entered, not how long you lasted. Somebody who started in August and lost in week two played the season and stays on the board, at the bottom of it.
A game with no line cannot be picked
Same rule as the pick'em, for a plumbing reason worth stating: only games with a posted line are graded, and a pick that can never be graded is a player who can never be eliminated. If it is on the card, it is pickable.
The lock
The whole week locks at the first kickoff, exactly as the pick'em does — not at each game's own start. One clock for the week, so nobody picks on Saturday night knowing what happened at noon.
Ranking
Everyone still alive is above everyone who is out, however deep the ended runs went. That is what a survivor pool is: the last one standing wins it. Wins order each group, so the longest live run leads the living and the longest ended run leads the dead.
A run that ended keeps its wins — getting six weeks deep and losing is a better season than getting two weeks deep and losing, and the board says so.
What is public
The same as the pick'em: your display name, your record, and after a week locks, the team you picked. Nothing before the lock — the pool cannot show you what everyone else is on while you can still change your mind. Here is everything we store.