Each week you pick one NFL team to win. Straight up — your team just has to win the game. No spreads.

The catch: once you use a team, you can never use them again. Picking the Chiefs in Week 1 means no Chiefs for the other 17 weeks.

One wrong pick and you're out. There are no second chances — except a buyback, below.

The contest runs Weeks 1–18 of the 2026 regular season. Last entry standing takes the pot.

$25 per entry. $5 of every entry goes to Lurie Children's Hospital; the remaining $20 goes into the pot.

You can buy up to 5 entries. Each one is completely independent — its own used-team list, its own life. Playing two entries and taking opposite sides of the same game is a perfectly legal strategy.

Sign-ups close Wednesday, September 9, 2026 at 7:20 PM CT — the first kickoff of Week 1.

When you sign up you get a private pick link by email. That link is your login — there's no password — so don't share it. You use the same link all season.

Payment is by Venmo, PayPal (friends and family) or Zelle. Matt marks entries paid by hand, so there may be a short lag. You can make picks before your entry is marked paid.

Each team locks at its own kickoff. The Thursday night teams come off the board Thursday evening; Sunday and Monday teams stay available right up to their own kickoffs. You can change an unlocked pick as many times as you want.

Teams you've already used are greyed out on the pick page, and a running board shows all 32 teams.

If you forget to pick: the system picks the away team in the Monday night game. If you've already used that team it falls to the home team, and if you've used both, that week is a loss. An auto-pick uses up that team just like a real pick would, and you'll get an email telling you it happened.

Ties: a tie counts as a loss — same as if your team lost outright.

Postponed or cancelled games: if a game is moved to a later date, it's scored whenever it's actually played. If a game is never played at all, the commissioner scores that pick as a push — you survive the week, but the team stays used.

Everyone's picks stay hidden until the relevant game kicks off. Once it does, the board shows who took whom, plus what percentage of the field was on each team.

Knocked out early? You can buy back in once for $25, any time through Week 4 picks.

Your used teams stay used. A buyback puts you back in the contest, not back at the start. This matters: if a buyback handed you all 32 teams again, buying back in Week 4 would be strictly better than surviving to Week 4, and everyone would just tank the first week.

Buyback money goes into the same pot, so buybacks grow the prize for whoever wins.

Winner takes all. The last entry standing wins the whole pot (currently $800 from 40 paid entries) .

If more than one entry is still alive after Week 18, they split the pot evenly.

If everyone still alive loses in the same week, the contest ends there and those entries split the pot evenly. Nobody gets shut out just because the last few all picked wrong on the same Sunday.

Negotiated split. Late in the contest the commissioner can put an even split to a vote (not before Week 10). It only happens if every remaining entry agrees — one "no" and the contest plays on. If anyone gets eliminated while a vote is open, the vote is cancelled and resets.

Payouts go out after the contest resolves, by the same method you paid.

This is a charity pool among friends. A few practical notes:

• Results come from ESPN automatically. If something looks wrong, tell Matt — scores can be corrected by hand, and a corrected result is locked so the next automatic update can't revert it.
• Your pick link is yours. If someone else has it, they can change your picks.
• The commissioner can fix a pick that was genuinely broken by a site problem. He will not change one because a game went badly.
• Entries that haven't paid by the time the contest resolves aren't eligible for the pot.

Questions: Matt Mangriotis · 630-308-9394