AGAINST THE SPREAD, EXPLAINED
Your pool says the picks are "ATS" and there's a -3.5 next to your team. Here's what all of it means, in plain English.
WHAT A POINT SPREAD IS
Most NFL games have a favorite, and some have an overwhelming one. If a pool just asked "who wins?", every card would be a list of favorites and the whole thing would come down to one or two toss-up games. The point spread fixes that.
A spread is a head start, expressed in points, that levels the two teams. When you see Chiefs -6.5, the minus sign marks the favorite: for a pick on the Chiefs to be correct, they must win by 7 or more. The other side of the same line is the underdog at +6.5: a pick on them is correct if they win the game outright or lose by 6 or fewer.
That single number turns a lopsided matchup into a real question. You're no longer asked "will the better team win?" — you're asked "will they win by enough?" And that question is close to a coin flip on every game of the slate, which is exactly what a pick'em pool wants.
Covering: How a Pick Is Graded
The side that beats the spread is said to cover. The arithmetic is one step: apply the spread to the favorite's score and compare. Same game, three endings:
Won by 10, needed 7+. Picks on the favorite are correct.
Favorite won the game but only by 3. Picks on the underdog are correct — this is the case that surprises new pool players.
An outright underdog win always covers. The +6.5 was never even needed.
The margin of the cover never matters — covering by half a point counts exactly like covering by thirty. A correct pick is a correct pick.
Pushes and the Half Point
On a whole-number spread, the game can land exactly on the line: a 7-point favorite wins by exactly 7. That's a push — neither side covered.
This is why nearly every posted line carries a half point (the famous "hook"): -6.5 or +3.5 can never land exactly, so a half-point line can never push. On the rare whole-number line, what a push does to your pick is a house rule, and it differs between our two pick'em formats:
In Pick 5
A push counts as a loss— it breaks the card. The game was played and your side didn't cover, so it can't be a free pass on an all-or-nothing card.
In Pick All
A push scores zero — no point earned, but your results show a push rather than a wrong pick.
A push is not the same as a void. A void is a game that never got played — postponed or cancelled — and a voided pick is excluded entirely, neither right nor wrong. A push is a real result that didn't cover.
Why a Pool Freezes One Line
Published spreads move all week — injuries, weather, and news push the number around from Tuesday to kickoff. For a pool, moving lines are poison: a member who picked on Wednesday and a member who picked on Saturday would be playing different games, and settling an argument about "which number counts" is exactly the commissioner work this platform exists to delete.
So FootballPools captures one line per game, before its picks lock, and freezes it. The number on your pick screen is the number every member of your pool plays and the number every pick is graded against — even if lines elsewhere have since moved. There's a practical reason too: pregame lines vanish from data feeds once a game ends, so a line that wasn't stored before kickoff couldn't be graded against at all.
One habit worth forming: the frozen line may differ slightly from a number you saw somewhere else. The pool's line is the only one that matters — check the pick screen, not the TV graphic.
Sports information, not betting advice. FootballPools displays point spreads as publicly available sports information, used solely to score picks inside private pools. FootballPoolsis not a sportsbook: it does not accept, place, or settle wagers, and it has no connection to any gambling operator. Nothing on this page is a prediction or a recommendation to bet. Pool entry fees, where a group has them, are collected and paid out privately by the pool's commissioner — never by FootballPools.
Spread FAQ
PUT IT INTO PLAY
Both pick'em formats on FootballPools are played against frozen spreads — five games a week, or the whole slate.