Welcome to this year’s slimmed down contest… Still a work in progress, but wanted to get the schedule out for anyone who wants to start picking.
This game, initiated by @Jables in 2009, is hanging around for the 2026 season, and at 18 now has voting rights.
The basic concept is to have a pick’em contest, where all the picks are made before the start of the season, as opposed to a regular week-by-week pick’em league. All of the bets are straight up wins and losses - nothing involving the spread or any of that.
As noted, the numbers guy and his intern (a very Fight Club-esque relationship between those two) has/have decided on a well-earned retirement. We’ll see if they pop back in to play (and I hope they do). Your current leader in the clubhouse in most statistical categories will keep us alive to see if Patience, or anyone else, can replace him before this game reaches legal drinking age.
So let’s have a little fun, the plan is for each week’s winner(s) to be awarded one COFP, double that for a perfect week, and in Week 17… err, 18… will have one loss turned to a win. Naming rights for a perfect 16-game week are still up for grabs (sorry, perfect in a bye week will just get you a double COFP), and no rewards for being faster than the rest this year.
How to Enter this Dreadful Contest
The second post of this thread will have the entire 2025 NFL schedule in it, week-by-week. **All you need to do to enter is quote that post and let me know who you think will win each of the (2^4)*17 games in the season. You can either delete the teams you think will lose from each match-up or retype (after the semicolon) the team you think will win. Whoever has the best predictions at the end of the season wins. After each week’s games are over, I’ll make a post showing everyone’s weekly and year-to-date results.
This year, we also need a Predicted Winning Percentage for the full year, as our tiebreaker in the unlikely event of a full season tie.
Overall & Weekly Winners-Tiebreaker: Weekly winners will all get a COFP, regardless of order of entry.
Overall winner will go by closest predicted final winning percentage, including COFPs.
The “Change One Future Pick” award can be held indefinitely — there’s no obligation to use it. If you do, it just needs to be declared before the kickoff of the game it affects.
Changing picks after initial submission
After submitting your picks, if you want to make any changes to them you are free to do so. However, you must make a new post. If you edit your old post, I won’t see it, and your change will not be recognized. Obviously, making a new post will result in a new time stamp on your entry sending you to the back of the line, possibly losing your early-entrant-COFP awards. You also have the option of using any of your early-entrant-COFP awards, should you have any. This will maintain your place in line, and any other early-entrant-COFP awards that you haven’t used & wouldn’t re-earn.
The season kicks off with the on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, with another game on Thursday, so I’ll need all entries in by then. That gives you plenty of time to submit your predictions. However, I’ll accept entries up until the start of the Sunday games on September 13th. Just keep in mind, if your (complete) entry is submitted after the season-opening games, you’ll be given a loss for each of those games.
Mistakes? Glitches? A misfiled COFP? Look, stuff happens. In the past, it seems, all blame was pinned on me, the intern or that numbnutsnumbersguy, but now it’s me, and I don’t take kindly to criticism so file it in the Suggestions Box that coincidentally looks like a garbage can. In all seriousness, let’s keep it as light and fun as it’s been for a long time now and enjoy the ride.
What’s in it for you? Eternal bragging rights and your name etched into the GoA Pick’em Hall of Fame… and who knows, maybe someone besides me will get a championship mug!
I’ll put some placeholders for all the other fun stuff (history, record books, maybe some of those photos that helped crash the old place), and GOOD LUCK TO ALL!
