How to run an NFL pick'em league with friends (free)

A pick’em league is the best group chat you’ll have all fall. Everyone picks, everyone talks trash, and there’s a leaderboard to settle it. I’ve run these for years, and the setup is easier than people expect. Here’s how to start one, keep it alive all season, and do it without spending a cent or touching a spreadsheet.

The quickest way to start a free pick’em league

The fastest route is to use a free pick’em app that handles picks, scoring and the leaderboard for you, then invite your friends with a link. No spreadsheet, no chasing people for picks, no doing the math yourself on Monday morning.

On PickemSZN it looks like this:

Create a free account.
Create a league, it gets its own private leaderboard.
Share the invite link with your group.
Everyone makes their picks each week; scoring and standings happen automatically.

Your picks count in your league and on the global leaderboard at the same time, so nobody has to choose between the big board and the group.

If you’d rather run it yourself

You can run a pool by hand with a spreadsheet, and plenty of people do. Fair warning on what you’re signing up for: collecting everyone’s picks before kickoff, entering results each week, tallying scores, and being the person everyone blames when a formula breaks. It works for a tiny group. Past five or six people it becomes a part-time job. This is exactly the chore I built PickemSZN to delete, but if you love a good spreadsheet, go for it.

Pick your format and rules up front

Decide these before Week 1 so there are no arguments later:

Format. Straight pick’em (one point per correct pick), odds-weighted (bold picks worth more), or against the spread. If you’re unsure, I compared the main options in Pick’em vs survivor vs confidence pools.
When picks lock. Locking each pick at its own kickoff is the fairest and hardest to game.
The stakes. Bragging rights, a trophy, loser buys wings, whatever keeps your group honest. (Keep it friendly, this is for fun.)

Keep people engaged all season

The hard part of any league isn’t starting it, it’s stopping people from ghosting by Week 6. A few things that work:

Talk in the chat every week. Post the standings, call out the leader, roast whoever forgot to pick.
Lean on the close weeks. With odds-based scoring the leaderboard stays tight, so remind the stragglers they’re one good week from the top.
Celebrate the upsets. The person who called the big underdog deserves their moment. Give it to them.
Recruit. More people, more chat, more fun. Keep sharing the invite link.

Get your league going

The NFL season kicks off in September, and the best time to set up your league is now, so the link’s already in the chat when Week 1 arrives. Create your free league at pickemszn.com, and if anyone in your group is new to all this, point them at what is NFL pick’em to get them up to speed.

See you (and your group chat) on the leaderboard.