Pick 6 rules and scoring

Each player drafts five teams, one from each conference slot. No two players in a league can have the same team.

The draft is a live snake draft, five rounds long, and every pick is on a clock. The commissioner schedules it and sets the order, or leaves the order random. A player whose clock runs out gets the top team in their queue, then the best team left by AP ranking.

Nobody can join a league once its draft has started.

Each team scores once for every game it plays.

Favorite and underdog come from the pre-game point spread. A spread smaller than 3.5 scores as a plain win or loss, and so does a game with no posted line. A postponed or cancelled game scores 0.

A team gets exactly one of the four results per game. The values do not stack: an underdog win is worth 2 points in all, not 1 plus 2.

The 2026 season is weeks 1 to 13 of ESPN's college football calendar, from the late-August openers through rivalry weekend, ending Saturday, November 28. There is no week 0: the earliest games are part of week 1, which runs through Labor Day.

Nothing after week 13 counts: not the conference championship games, not Army-Navy, not the bowls, not the College Football Playoff. Everyone's last game is on the same weekend, and the leaderboard is final once it is scored.

Every game a team plays counts. Week 1 covers two weekends, so some teams play twice in it. The second game counts in week 2 if the team is off that week, and in week 1 otherwise. Season totals are the same either way.

One leaderboard, cumulative all season, decides the league: the most points wins.

Players tied on points are ordered by strength of schedule. Add up the schedule-strength rank of each of a player's teams, from ESPN's Football Power Index, where 1 is the hardest schedule in the country. The lower total ranks higher, so the tougher road wins the tie.

Every player gets one swap: drop a team and add a team nobody owns from the same conference slot. All swaps happen at once, before any week 6 game.

During week 5, each player ranks up to 10 swaps in order of preference. The list is private and can be changed until it locks.

When week 6 starts, the lists lock and each league's swaps run in reverse order of the standings: worst record first. Each player gets the highest swap on their list that is still possible. Only teams that nobody owned when the lists locked can be added, so a team dropped in the swap is out of play.

Points already scored stay where they are. The old team keeps the weeks before the swap, and the new team counts from week 6 on.

The final week of the season is also played head to head. Every player gets a bowl game against the player next to them in the standings.

Seeds are the standings through week 12. Seed 1 plays seed 2, 3 plays 4, and so on down. In a league with an odd number of players, the last three share the final bowl.

The most Pick 6 points in week 13 wins the bowl. If that is tied, the most real points scored by the player's teams in those games wins. If that is tied too, the higher seed wins.

A bowl is for bragging rights. Week 13 counts on the leaderboard like any other week, and the league champion is still whoever has the most points. Each bowl's name is for sale, once a season.

The College Football Playoff scores no Pick 6 points. It decides who drafts first next season. Every player fills out the 12-team bracket once the field is announced.

A correct winner is worth 1 point in the first round, 1 in the quarterfinals, 2 in the semifinals and 4 for the champion: 16 points in all. The most points drafts first. Ties go to the closest guess of the total points in the national championship game, then to the player who finished lower in the regular season.

The whole bracket locks when the first Playoff game kicks off, and nobody can see anyone else's bracket before then.