SURVIVOR POOL RULES

Each week, every living player picks exactly one NFL team to win its game outright. The point spread plays no part in survivor: a team that wins by one as a two-touchdown underdog keeps you alive, and a team that loses by one as a two-touchdown favorite knocks you out. If your team wins, you survive to the next week. If it loses, you're eliminated.

A tie eliminates under the standard rule — a tie is not a win. Pools created with the ties-survive option treat a tie like a survival instead, so only a loss or a missed pick eliminates. NFL ties are rare, but the rule is fixed at pool creation so it never has to be argued about live.

Each team can be used once per season. Once you've survived on a team, it's off your slate for good — the pick screen shows exactly which teams you have left. This rule has no off switch; it's what makes survivor a season-long game rather than 18 independent coin flips.

You can't run out: 32 teams across 18 weeks means even a player who survives the whole season uses barely more than half their slate. The scarcity is in good teams on good matchups, not in teams.

A pick locks at its game's kickoff, or when the Sunday afternoon slate begins — whichever comes first. In practice: Thursday (and any Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday-morning international) games lock at their own kickoff, and every Sunday-afternoon and Monday game locks together the moment the first Sunday afternoon game kicks off. Nobody gets to pick Monday night after watching Sunday. All deadlines are Eastern Time.

Until a pick's game locks, you can change it freely. A missed pick counts the same as a loss: if you're alive and have no pick in once the week's last game locks, you're eliminated. Reminder emails and push notifications go out before every deadline, and pools can enable auto-picks as a safety net — the strongest team left on your slate is submitted for you, and you can still override it before kickoff.

A team on its bye has no game that week, so it simply isn't selectable — it stays on your slate, unusable until it plays again. In the 2026 season, byes fall in 9 of the 18 weeks, with as many as 6 teams off the board at once. The bye list comes from the NFL schedule data itself, so a postponed game is never mistaken for a bye.

If your team's game is postponed, cancelled, or moved out of the week entirely, your pick is voided — not graded. You survive the week and the team returns to your slate as if you had never used it. You didn't get the contest you picked, so the pick doesn't count for or against you.

Weeks are also settled all-or-nothing: eliminations for a week are only applied once every game in that week has finished. Nobody is told they're out on Sunday night only for the ruling to change after Monday's game.

Your pick is private until its game locks, then it becomes visible to the whole pool. Because games lock at different times, the Thursday picks are public while everyone's Sunday picks are still hidden — so waiting until the last minute never buys anyone a look at what the room is doing.

A survivor pool ends one of three ways:

• Sole survivor. Everyone else has been eliminated; the last player standing is champion the moment the deciding week completes.
• Everyone falls the same week. If every remaining player goes out together, nobody is eliminated retroactively — the pool's tie rule decides. The default for new pools is a valid pick beats no pick: players who made a real pick that week outrank anyone who missed the deadline, and the valid-pickers share the win. Commissioners can instead choose co-champions, where everyone who fell together splits the pot evenly.
• The season runs out. Two or more players alive after Week 18 are co-champions and split the pot.

Champions are only crowned when a week fully completes — never mid-week — so a title can't be handed out while a result could still change it.

Mid-season joining(on by default): new players can enter at any week and start picking from the current one. Weeks before they joined don't count against them and can't eliminate them — and a player whose first week hasn't been played yet can't be crowned either.

Rebuys (off by default): an eliminated player pays back into the pot and re-enters alive from the next open week. Their used-team history carries over — no fresh slate. Rebuys close once the pool has been decided.

Multiple entries is a third option: commissioners can let each member run more than one card in the same pool, each with its own slate and its own life.

Entry fees are optional and are collected and held by the commissioner — FootballPools never touches the money. The platform records the fee, tracks who has paid, and shows the pot; the payout at the end is settled directly within the group, the same way it was collected.