How to Create an NFL Pick’em Pool: A Setup Walkthrough

Quick answer: Creating an NFL pick’em pool takes about five minutes of clicking and about twenty minutes of deciding. The clicking is: name the pool, choose pick’em as the format, choose NFL as the league, set your scoring rules, set a tiebreaker, set your deadlines, invite people. The deciding — spreads or straight up, how many games, what happens to the money — is the part that determines whether anyone is still playing in December.

Decide these four things first

Every argument a pool has in November traces back to a decision that was never made in August. Settle these before you create anything:

Who is in? Just your team, the whole floor, or friends and family too? The answer changes your format — a 12-person pool and a 60-person pool want different things.
Is there money? If yes, how much, who holds it, and when is the deadline to pay. If no, what is the prize instead. Both are fine; ambiguity is not.
Spreads or straight up? Straight up is simpler and more inclusive. Against the spread separates the standings and keeps blowout games meaningful. See against the spread vs. straight up if you are torn.
Weekly prizes, season prize, or both? Both is almost always the right answer in an office, because it keeps people who start badly from checking out.

Write your answers in a sentence each. That sentence becomes your rules post, and having it in writing on day one prevents roughly ninety percent of future disputes.

Step 1 — Name it

The name shows up in every invitation and every standings screenshot, so make it something people will recognize in their inbox. Department names work, in-jokes work better, and if you want a shortcut there are a few hundred in football pool name ideas.

Step 2 — Choose the format

Pick ‘Pick Em’ from the pool type list. The other options in that dropdown — confidence, survivor, reverse survivor and single pick — are the alternatives, and if you want to compare before committing, the five types of office football pools lays them side by side.

One useful thing to know: the pool type is not sport-specific. Whatever you learn setting up this NFL pool applies unchanged when you run a basketball or baseball version later in the year.

Step 3 — Choose the league

Select NFL. The 2026 schedule comes preloaded — Hall of Fame Week, preseason, Weeks 1 through 18, and the playoff rounds — so you are not typing in matchups or updating anything when the schedule shifts.

If you want a college pool as well, that is a separate pool with NCAA Football selected, and it needs a different rule set for reasons covered in college football pool rules. Run them as two pools rather than trying to combine the slates.

Step 4 — Set the scoring rules

This is the screen that matters. The options you will want to think about:

Use point spreads. On means picks are scored against the spread. Off means straight up. There is also a middle setting — show the spreads for information without scoring against them — which is a good compromise for a group that wants the context without the complexity.
Correct underdog picks score double. A lighter way to get separation than full against-the-spread scoring. Underdogs become worth chasing, so the field stops being unanimous, but the rules stay simple enough to explain in a sentence.
Incorrect picks subtract points. Off by default, and for a first-year office pool leave it off. It punishes participation, and participation is the thing you are trying to protect.
Picks per week. Blank means everyone picks every game. Set it to a number — say 10 of 16 — and each player chooses which games to pick, which is a genuinely different game: now you are also being judged on which games you avoided.
Curated weekly slate. Lets you hand-pick which games appear. Rarely needed for the NFL, where sixteen games is a reasonable weekly ask. It is essential for college.

If this is your group’s first pool, the safest configuration is straight up, all games, no penalties. You can add spice next season once everyone is comfortable.

Step 5 — Set the tiebreaker

Do not skip this. Pick’em standings bunch tightly, and in a pool of twenty there is a real chance your season comes down to it.

You are choosing two things: the question, and how it is judged. The question is either total combined points in the final game or margin of victory. The judging is either closest wins, or closest without going over — the price-is-right version, which stops people from guessing 200 to cover themselves.

Total points with ‘closest without going over’ is the most common office setup. Tiebreaker rules goes into what happens when even that ties.

Step 6 — Set your deadlines

By default, each game locks at its own kickoff, which is the fairest arrangement — you keep the right to change a Sunday pick after Thursday news, but you cannot pick a game that has already started.

If you would rather have everyone commit to the full week up front, you can lock a whole week at once instead. Either way, say which one you chose in your rules post, because the Thursday night game will catch someone out in Week 1 and you want to be able to point at something you wrote in August.

Step 7 — Invite people

Send invites at least two weeks before the opener. People need time to join, read the rules and pay, and a pool that fills up in the final 48 hours before kickoff always has three people who never actually finish signing up.

Your invitation should contain four things and nothing else: what the pool is, what it costs, when picks are due, and the join link. Anything longer does not get read.

On cost — the first four players are free for the full season, and beyond that you are billed per person rather than per pool, so someone who plays in two of your pools still counts once. Exact tiers are on the pricing page.

Step 8 — Run a test week

Use a preseason week as a dry run. Get everyone to submit picks that do not count, and you will discover the two people who never got the invite, the one whose email bounced, and the fact that nobody understood the tiebreaker — all in a week where none of it matters.

Twenty minutes in August, no Week 1 fire drill.

Then let it run

Once it is live, the weekly job is small: results score themselves, standings update, and you post a short note on Tuesdays. What that looks like across a full season is in running a weekly NFL pick’em pool, and the format page is NFL pick’em pool.

The 2026 season opens September 9. Create your pool free — four players, full season, no card needed.