📜 Terms of Service

The Tailgate is a free, invite-only football pick'em league. These terms are short because the deal is simple.

The deal

It's free and it stays free. No entry fee, no wagering, no payouts, no prizes with monetary value. The only thing at stake is bragging rights. This is a game of skill played for fun, not a gambling service.
You must be 13 or older to have an account.
Your account is yours. One account per person, invited by a league member. Don't share your login or make picks for someone else.
Optional donations toward hosting costs are voluntary gifts, processed by Stripe, and not refundable. They buy nothing but goodwill.

The commissioner's ruling is final on scoring, disputes, postponements, data errors, and anything else weird. Rule changes apply the following week, never retroactively.
Keep the Water Cooler friendly. Trash talk is the point; harassment isn't. Commissioners can remove comments and players from their league, and the site operator can remove accounts that abuse the service.
Don't break the site. No scraping, probing, automating picks, or trying to unmask other players through technical means. The aliases are the whole bit.

The service is provided as-is, with no warranties of any kind. It's a hobby project run with care, but scores can lag, feeds can hiccup, and the site can go down during the fourth quarter. We're not liable for any damages arising from your use of it, to the maximum extent the law allows.
Game data comes from third parties (CollegeFootballData and ESPN's public data). We don't control it and can't guarantee it.
The service can change or shut down. If it ever does, reasonable notice will go out and the House Rules on data (see the privacy page) still apply.
Changes to these terms take effect when posted here. Last updated August 2026.