Pick 5 is played against the spread: each week you pick five games, and for each one you're not picking who wins — you're picking who covers. If you've never played against a line before, the notation looks like code. It isn't. This post is everything you need to read one, and how the numbers behave inside our pools specifically.
One thing up front: FootballPools is not a sportsbook and the spreads we show are sports information — the same numbers published across every sports site and broadcast. We display them because our formats are scored with them. Nothing here is betting advice; it's how to read the card you're already playing.
What −3.5 means
A point spread is a handicap. When you see a line written as a team name and a negative number — say a home team at −3.5 — it means that team is favored by 3.5 points. To grade the game, you subtract 3.5 from the favorite's final score (equivalently, add 3.5 to the underdog's) and see who's ahead then.
Concretely, suppose the favorite is −3.5 and wins 27–24. Real life: they won. Against the spread: 27 minus 3.5 is 23.5, which is less than 24 — the favorite won the game but failed to cover, and everyone who took the underdog got the point. Win by exactly 4 or more, and the favorite covers.
The signs always mirror each other. If one side is −3.5, the other side is +3.5. A minus number is the favorite laying points; a plus number is the underdog getting them. Picking a +3.5 underdog wins in two ways: the underdog wins outright, or loses by 3 or fewer.
Why the half point exists
That .5 is called the hook, and it exists for one reason: half points can't happen on a scoreboard, so the result can never land exactly on the line. A whole-number spread can — a 3-point favorite winning by exactly 3 is called a push, neither a cover nor a failure to cover.
The line source we use attaches a half point to nearly every number, so pushes are rare in practice. But rules have to be written for the case that does occur, so here is ours, precisely: in Pick 5, a push counts as a loss. A push breaks the card the same way a wrong pick does. The reasoning is that a push is a real, played result that simply didn't cover — treating it as a free pass would hand out pots on four correct picks, and the format's whole identity is five. (In Pick All, our every-game format, a push scores no point but is recorded as a push, not a loss — there's no card to break, just a point not earned.)
A push is not the same thing as a void. If a game is postponed or cancelled, your pick is voided — the schedule failed you, so the pick neither helps nor hurts, and a card that goes 4-for-4 on its remaining games still wins. Push: you played and didn't cover. Void: you never got the game you picked.
Favorites, underdogs, and what the number is telling you
A spread is not a prediction that the favorite wins by exactly that margin. It's the number that the market judges makes both sides roughly a coin flip. That has a practical consequence for how you should read it: a team favored by 10 is not "certain to win" — it's expected to win comfortably, and the question the line asks is whether comfortably means 10.
This is why picking against the spread feels so different from picking winners. Five obvious favorites straight up might all win. Five favorites against the spread each still have to clear their number, and each of those is closer to a coin flip than it looks. A few habits that help:
- Separate "who wins" from "who covers." They're different questions, and the second one is the only one your card asks.
- Big spreads cut both ways. Late in blowouts, leading teams sit starters and trailing teams score cosmetic points. A 13.5-point line lives exactly in that zone.
- Underdogs win the margin more often than they win the game. A bad team that loses 20–17 covered at +7.5. You don't need upsets to cash a card of dogs — just closer games than the numbers expect.
- Don't chase the same number twice. All five picks riding one theory — say, five home favorites — is one opinion, not five picks.
Why your pool freezes one line
Spreads move all week. Injuries, weather, and the market itself push numbers around from the moment they're posted to kickoff. For a sportsbook that's normal business. For a pool it would be poison: if you got a team at −2.5 on Wednesday and your rival got the same team at −3.5 on Saturday, the same 3-point win grades your identical picks differently. Every close week would end in an argument.
So pools play a frozen line. When the week opens, we capture one pregame spread per game and store it, and that stored number is what every card in the pool is graded against — no matter what the line does afterward. Everyone plays the same number. There is no reward for timing your submission and no way to shop a better price, which is exactly the point: Pick 5 is a contest of judgment against a fixed benchmark, identical for the whole pool.
The frozen number can drift from what you see on TV by Sunday. That's fine — it isn't trying to be the latest price, it's trying to be the same price for everyone. And your card always shows the number you're playing before you lock anything in.
Deadlines, in one paragraph
Every game locks on its own kickoff or when the Sunday afternoon slate starts, whichever comes first. Thursday's game stays pickable until Thursday kickoff; a Sunday-morning international game locks at its own early kickoff; everything else — Sunday afternoon through Monday night — locks together when the first Sunday afternoon game kicks off. Submit your five before the earliest game you care about, and you never have to think about it again.
Read the number, respect the hook, and remember the card only asks one question five times: who covers?