Football Pickem Pool

When games happen on Thursdays we always get a few people that write to tell us how the dog ate their keyboard and they were unable to make their picks in time.   Of course we feel bad about this, because a keyboard can be an unhealthy snack for ever the largest of dogs.

At the start of the season we played with the idea of auto-reminders, but went with a group controlled process instead.  For this to work, you must edit your profile to allow either text or email to be sent to you.   Here's how you do that -- after you login you would click the Edit Profile icon from the control panel.

Then slide on down the screen and click yes to at least one of these two items. 

 (If you click yes to text messages, put in whatever email address would hit your phone ... not just your cell number.)

Now *anyone* in your group can remind others in their group of early games.    All you need to do is click the link at the bottom of the Your Group Member screen.    (Of course in a highly competitive group, nobody would do this as missing your picks can only help the others.   However, in a perfect world... people will care about you and your picks. :) 

The pick window is the amount of time you have to make your picks each week.    On the admin side, this is what it looks like to create/edit what's called a Pick_Period, which is where the pick window is defined.

The pick window has two dates:  A start and an end.   A normal pick window would begin Tuesday at 1am and close about 1pm on the next Sunday.   During this period of time, picks can be made/changed. 

In the case where there are early games, the pick window "slides" during the week, which is a manual process.   For example, on a week where there is a Thursday game, the pick window would run from Tuesday until maybe 8pm on Thursday.   At 8pm, the picks would close and no adjustments could be made.   In addition, everyone can see what others picked for that game, as well as all remaining games for the week.    After the Thursday game is completed and scored, the end date above is changed to close on Sunday end at kickoff time.  

When picks are open, you can only see your own picks.   When they close, picks can't be changed and everyone can see all other picks in their group.

So the tip for good picking on weeks where there is an early game:   Make all your picks before the kickoff of the first game, not just for the first game.   Why?   Two reasons:  If you forget to make the rest of your picks, you don't get all zeros and, should the admin not reopen the pick window -- you're covered.    The downside of this:   If you make all your picks before a Thursday game, you're letting everyone in your group see what you have planned for the Sunday/Monday games.   

No.   You only get one set of picks.

In League you can join multiple groups but you only get one set of picks that are used within all groups.   You have one login name to remember and one set of picks to do each week.

When you log into League, you will be connected to the group where you last logged out.   To switch between groups, you would click the Select Groups icon from the control panel and select the desired group.

(If you are only a member of one group, the above dropdown will not appear.)

The reason you would want to switch between groups?   Only two reasons we can think of:  Posting messages and checking where you stand in that group.