🏈 Welcome to The Tailgate
The Tailgate is an invite-only football hangout. It runs two season-long games: College Pick'em and the NFL Burn Book. Both are free, no money and no wagering, bragging rights only. Play one or play both, they have separate standings and separate champions.
How the site works
- Make your picks on each game's My Picks page: four picks a week per game. Pick a game from the dropdown and make your call; picks save on their own the moment your selection is complete.
- Change your mind freely until kickoff. The moment a game kicks off, the pick riding on it is locked for good.
- Other players' picks are hidden until their game kicks off, so nobody can copy your homework. After kickoff, everything shows on the Weekly Results page.
- Scoring is automatic. Results and points update from live data within about an hour of games finishing. The commissioner has final say on anything weird (postponements, data errors, disputes).
- Miss a week? No penalty, you just score zero for the picks you didn't make. Jump back in any time.
- Blank category? If a category has no qualifying games in a week, it is skipped for everyone.
- 📣 Scouts can recruit. The commissioner can deputize players as Scouts, trusted to invite new members from their Locker Room. The league stays invite-only; there are just more people holding invitations.
- 🥸 Everyone plays under an alias. At signup you're assigned the name of a football legend (Dick Butkus, Red Grange, take what you get). Nobody's real identity shows unless they reveal it themselves in the Locker Room, so playing incognito is the norm, not a tell. The commissioner sees real names for invitations, but never who owns which alias. Even the commissioner plays blind.
- 🎭 Opening-weeks blackout. Until every week 1 game is final, everyone else appears only as a numbered Mystery Legend. Aliases unveil for the whole league at once when week 1 is settled, so nobody can figure out who's who by watching signups trickle in.
- 💬 The Water Cooler is the place for trash talk and weekly debriefs. Every Weekly Results page has a "Discuss this week" button that jumps straight to that week's thread. Tick the 🔔 box on any thread to get an email when someone posts there: one email per thread until you've been back to read it, and every email has a one-click stop link. Want to hear about every new thread as it starts? Flip that on in your Locker Room.
- 🪪 Legend Profiles. Tap any alias anywhere on the site to open that player's profile: season numbers, pick history (locked picks only, same as Weekly Results), tendencies, badges, and your head-to-head record against them.
- 🏆 The Trophy Case tracks badges you earn along the way, from easy ones to a few that may never be seen. Rarer badges are worth more on the badge leaderboard. Badges are their own side race and don't affect season standings.
📲 Put it on your phone
The Tailgate installs straight from your browser. No app store, nothing to update.
- iPhone and iPad: open your tailgate's site in Safari, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen. Open it from the new icon from then on. Notifications only work from the Home Screen version.
- Android: open the site in Chrome, tap the ⋮ menu, then Install app (or Add to Home screen).
- Computer: nothing to install. Notifications work right in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari.
- Turn on alerts in your Locker Room under Phone notifications, once on each device. Pick which ones you want: pick reminders, pick results, badges, new Water Cooler threads, and the Monday Paper. Nothing arrives between 10 PM and 7 AM Mountain; it waits for morning.
🎓 College Pick'em
Four picks a week, each from its own pool of games.
1. Regional Game (1 to 5 points)
Pick the straight-up winner of any game involving a Division I team from your tailgate's home states (your commissioner picks the map; the founding league runs Idaho and its neighbors). You can pick either side of a qualifying game. A win is worth 1 point, and calling an upset pays more: a bonus point for every touchdown your underdog overcame, capped at 5. The locked spread sets the size of the upset; games without a line use the FPI gap instead, and an FCS team toppling an FBS team always pays the full 5.
2. Top Underdog (points = FPI gap)
Pick any matchup where both teams carry an ESPN FPI rating, and you must take the team with the lower FPI. If your underdog wins outright, you earn the FPI gap rounded to the nearest point (minimum 1). Knock off a team rated 17 points better, earn 17 points. FPI snapshots weekly, and that week's numbers are the ones your pick is scored against.
3. Against the Spread (1 point)
Pick any game with a published point spread and choose the team that will cover it. Lines lock Thursday at noon each week, and the locked number is the one that counts. If the final margin lands exactly on the spread, it's a push and the pick is void.
4. The Outlier (up to 3 points)
Pick any game on the slate and call your shot: will it be the week's highest scoring game, or its lowest? Nail the exact extreme for 3 points; land in the top three (or bottom three, if you called low) for 1. This is the one pick that reads the whole weekend, not just one matchup — and because it compares against every game, it settles once the entire week's slate is final, not at your game's whistle. The slate is the week's games inside the seven days ending at its last kickoff, so early "week 0" openers that had already been played before picks opened don't count.
Champion and tiebreakers
Most total points over the regular season wins. Ties break by (1) most Top Underdog points, (2) most correct ATS picks, (3) co-champions share the title.
🔥 NFL Burn Book
Four picks a week with four different flavors of nerve. NFL lines lock Wednesday at noon, before Thursday Night Football.
1. Survivor (2 points)
Pick one team to win straight up. Here's the catch: once you use a team, it's burned for the rest of the season, win or lose. There are 32 teams and 18 weeks, so spend the good ones wisely. Do you burn the Chiefs on a cupcake matchup in September, or save them for when you're desperate in December?
2. Longshot (points = the spread)
Pick any underdog to win outright. If they pull the upset, you earn the locked spread rounded to the nearest whole number (minimum 1). A +7.5 dog that wins pays 8 points. Favorites are not valid longshots, that's the whole point.
3. Lock (+1 or −1)
Your sure thing of the week, straight up. Win and you get 1 point. Lose and you lose a point. Choose like your reputation depends on it, because it does.
4. Bullseye (up to 3 points)
The standalone games everyone actually watches: Thursday night, Saturday, Sunday night, and Monday night. Pick one and call the final combined score. Land within 3 points of it for 3; within 7 for 1. The whole league guessing the same number on the same broadcast — the fourth quarter gets loud.
💎 Perfect week (+2 bonus)
Sweep Survivor, Longshot, and Lock in the same week and you earn a +2 bonus on top. Bullseye is gravy; it never gates the bonus.
Champion and tiebreakers
Most total points over the 18-week regular season wins. Ties break by (1) most Longshot points, (2) most survivor wins, (3) co-champions share the title.
🏆 The badges
Every badge in the Trophy Case, from gimmes to white whales. Rarer badges are worth more on the badge leaderboard: Common 1 · Uncommon 2 · Rare 4 · Legendary 8.
- 🏈 Opening Kickoff — Save your first pick. Welcome to The Tailgate.
- 🃏 Full House — Submit all eight picks across both games in the same week.
- 💬 Bulletin Board Material — Post in the Water Cooler for the first time. Say it to their faces.
- 🎯 Dialed In — Hit all four College Pick'em picks in one week.
- 💎 Flawless — A perfect NFL week: all four Burn Book picks hit.
- 🗡️ Giant Slayer — Win a Top Underdog worth 12 or more points.
- 🚀 Moon Shot — Win a Longshot worth 7 or more points.
- ⏰ Buzzer Beater — Save a pick less than 15 minutes before kickoff.
- 💔 Bad Beat — Lose an Against the Spread pick by a single point or less. Condolences.
- 🏡 Homer — Win a pick riding your favorite team. Loyalty pays.
- 📸 Photo Finish — Win an Against the Spread pick by a single point or less.
- 🥚 Goose Egg — Submit all eight picks and lose every one. It takes commitment.
- 💥 Upset Special — Win a Regional Game at the full five upset points.
- 🙃 False Prophet — Lose your Lock three weeks running. Your sure thing has a pattern.
- 🧻 Mr. Irrelevant — Finish a season at the bottom of a league's standings while actually playing. Somebody has to.
- 🐺 Lone Wolf — Win a pick on a game no other player touched that week.
- 🧊 Ice Cold — Win your Lock five weeks in a row.
- 🛡️ Still Standing — Win eight straight Survivor picks.
- 🎰 Jackpot — Score 15 or more points in a single week of one game.
- 🐍 Turncoat — Win a pick made against your own favorite team. Cold-blooded.
- 🧟 Back From the Dead — Follow a winless week with a perfect week in the same game.
- 🎟️ Season Ticket — Submit all eight picks ten weeks in a row.
- 👑 King of the Hill — Hold sole possession of first place in either game from week four on.
- 🏹 Dead Center — Predict a Bullseye total exactly. The number, on the nose.
- 🔭 Called Shot — Nail The Outlier's exact extreme: your game finishes as THE highest or lowest of the week.
- 🎭 Jekyll & Hyde — Sweep all four picks in one game and lose all four in the other, same week. Two leagues, two people.
- 🌡️ Full Spectrum — Win The Outlier calling highest one week and lowest another in the same season. You read the whole slate, both directions.
- 🛗 The Elevator — Climb five or more spots in a league's standings in a single week. Going up.
- 🧹 Clean Sweep — Win all eight picks across both games in the same week.
- 🏆 The Insufferable — Win a season championship in either game. One insufferable champion, badge to match.
House rules
- Open to anyone with an invitation. New players can join mid-season and earn points from that week forward.
- Postponed or cancelled games void the pick, no penalty.
- The commissioner has final say on disputed or ambiguous picks.
- Rule changes take effect the following week, never retroactively.
Ready to play? Check your inbox for an invitation, or log in if you already have an account.