How to win your football pool

How to win your football pool

Winning a football pool is challenging for some people and it is usually due to not knowing the basics of picking football games. In a football pool, there are usually a handful of beginners and a couple of real football fans.

Preparing for Each Week

Every week in NFL football, there are a large number of football pools across America. The first step to winning yours is to know your competition. Picking NFL football games is all about strategy. If you are in a football pool with a bunch of people that do not know what they are doing, you can be a little more brave with upsets. If you are competing against football pickers, then you will want to play it a bit more straight up. For the sake of this article, we are going to assume that you are picking against experienced competition.

When you prepare for each week, you will want to go to ESPN's or the NFL's websites to brush up on the teams. There are usually a number of "no-brainer" picks, and you will want to pick the obvious early in the season. Week one is not the time to pick incredible upsets. If you get far behind, you will have a tough time catching up. Go with the flow at the start of the season, and pick the favorites in general.

After filling in your obvious winners, then go back and look at the games that seem to be evenly matched. These games are what separates the winners from the losers in a football pool. Look at the running game first. If a team is a great running team, and the other team is weak in that area, go with the strong running team. This is very reliable and most of the time it will bear itself out. Go with the strong running teams over pass happy teams.

Another factor to look at with even match ups is the home team. Home team advantage is real and it does make a difference in your success in football pools. If you are totally undecided, then go with the home team. Over the course of a long season, those picks will serve you well.

When you are inclined to pick an upset, which should not be until later in the year, be sure to have a reason. Picking a random upset is not strategy. It is a sure sign that you will lose eventually, regardless of the occasional correct pick.

Later In the Season

Once you reach the final quarter of the season, take a good look at where you stand. If you are in the upper fourth of the league, then you are in a good position to win. If you are in the lower to middle area, then you need to make some moves quickly.

One way to make a move is to go with unpopular, yet intelligent picks. It is late in the season and you have to make up some games. Who is playing good football in the NFL but has a bad record overall? Pick those teams. At least you will have a good chance of winning a few of those.

If you are in the upper quarter, then stay with the strategy you have been playing. At the end of every NFL season, football pool leaders start to make silly picks. It happens every year as they smell the finish line. If you remain steady and go with the same strategy, you will pick up a couple of games at least.

Do the math and see how many games you need to make up to win going into the last three weeks. Plan out which games you are going to take a chance on, and hope for some help. More than likely there will be several games where you and the leaders picked differently, so you should give yourself a chance to win.

Finally, remember that steady, intelligent picks wins every time over haphazard, random picks. The occasional great week of upsets that your competition picks will not bear out over the course of the season. Stay with steady and you too, will win your football office pool!

Article courtesy of www.eHow.com. 
By Rodney Southern, eHow Contributor
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Is Watching Football Making You Smarter?

Is Watching Football Making You Smarter?

The Science Behind Why Being an NFL Fan Is Good For Your Brain

Article courtesy of AskMen.com

"Not only is watching football not causing you the kind of brain damage veteran linebackers have to worry about, it may actually be making you smarter."

If you're an American, chances are you watch football. In fact, chances are you watch a lot of football. A recent Harris poll determined that 73% of American men watch football on a weekly basis. A quarter of the football-watching public spends between 6 and 10 hours a week glued to their screens; another 6% spend the equivalent of a part-time job following their favorite teams. Yes, football has replaced churchgoing as America's most popular Sunday pastime. Amen. 

And while we here at AskMen certainly have no problem with that, there's a wider perception that, well, time spent eating nachos and cheering on your favorite team from the comfort of your couch is time wasted. That seems to go double if you paint your face and wave a giant foam finger around. Well, cheer up, faithful football fans: we're here to tell you otherwise. Not only is watching football not causing you the kind of brain damage veteran linebackers have to worry about, it may actually be making you smarter.  

Memory And Brain Function
Think of what it takes to be a diehard football fan. Chances are you can name every player on the team, when they joined the league, what college they went to, and what their season and career averages are across a half-dozen relevant statistical categories. A study commissioned by the Archives of Neurology found that repeated mental exercises like the ones done by devoted fans memorizing player stats not only provided a temporary boost in cognitive function but actually permanently altered brain structure — in other words, being a football nerd is actually literally improving your brain. That same study found that people who engaged in these mental games for long periods of time actually reduced their risk of contracting Alzheimer's disease in later life, so not only will your Sunday binge-watching make you smarter, it may also help stave off future brain decay (which is a pretty convincing argument if anyone’s trying to ask you to stop watching football and wash the dishes, for instance).

Language 
Football fans use language in unique ways, and part of being a fan is understanding the lexicon behind the game. Anyone who’s sat at a bar and listened uncomprehendingly to diehard fans discuss the finer aspects of their sport knows this all too well. A study out of the University of Chicago that used fMRI scans to monitor the brains of hockey players, fans and non-fans during a game found that just watching a sport or listening to a sport being discussed lit up the areas of the brain associated with language and linguistics. Basically, listening to football makes you a better listener in general.

Motor Function
One of the oldest and most important studies on sports spectating and cognition comes from the University of Parma, in Italy. Have you ever been watching a game and witnessed a spectacular feat of athleticism, like a one-hand, over-the-shoulder touchdown catch, or a nimble running back finding the smallest hole in the offensive line. Your jaw hits the floor and you ask how the hell anyone could do that?! Well, it turns out that your brain is silently piecing together the answer. While observing macaque monkeys, researchers discovered that the same areas of the brain that fired up when a monkey reached out to grab a delicious snack from a researcher's hand also fired up when the monkey was only watching that action being performed. They were teaching themselves how to perform the action just by watching. We’re not saying that you’re going to be the next Drew Brees just by watching the Saints QB run right and throw left, but you might just become a little less clumsy.
So the next time your girlfriend, wife or friends decide to hassle you about your watching too much football, sit back, take a long, slow drag of a fine cigar or a swig of your favorite brandy and inform this philistine that they need to avail themselves of the latest neuroscience research, posthaste. Then turn your painted face back to the TV and enjoy the rest of the game in peace.

Click here to read the full article on AskMen.com 

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