For those of you who don't know how football pools work, here's the easy version.

You pick the winners for the entire week's schedule.  Usually, a contribution is involved, and the winner gets the pot.  However, this is a friendly pool, and no money will be involved.  We're playing for pure bragging rights here.

Anyone interested needs to get their picks in (by replying to the week's post) by Friday night at midnight easterm time.  (Saturday morning, depending on how you view it.)  The exception to this is week 13, where there is a game on Thursday, November 27th.  That week, picks will be due on Wednesday.

Here's the week 1 schedule (a little late):

NY Jets @ Washington (Thursday)
Arizona @ Detroit
Denver@ Cincinatti
Indianapolis@ Cleveland
Minnesota @ Green Bay
San Diego @ Kansas City
Atlanta @ Dallas
New Orleans @ Seattle
Baltimore @ Pittsburgh
Houston @ Miami
Jacksonville @ Carolina
New England @ Buffalo
St Louis @ NY Giants
Chicago @ San Francisco
Oakland @ Tennessee
Tampa @ Philadelphia (Monday)

Reply with a list of your winners.  (And be honest about last nights game.  I still haven't seen the score, but I know that the team I picked was down in the 3rd quarter.)

Manchester United 1 Liverpool FC 3
Norwich City 1 Ipswich Town 72

Hold on... Wrong sport... Sorry

OK, here we go:

Arizona @ Detroit-Detroit (Week 1 upset)
Denver@ Cincinatti-Denver
Indianapolis@ Cleveland-Cleveland
Minnesota @ Green Bay-Green Bay
San Diego @ Kansas City-San Diego
Atlanta @ Dallas-Dallas (because of no Vick)
New Orleans @ Seattle-Seattle
Baltimore @ Pittsburgh-Baltimore
Houston @ Miami-Maimi
Jacksonville @ Carolina-Jacksonville  
New England @ Buffalo-New England
St Louis @ NY Giants-St. Louis
Chicago @ San Francisco-San Francisco
Oakland @ Tennessee-Tennessee (game of the week)
Tampa @ Philadelphia (Monday)-Tampa

OK, as far as Thursdays game went (I didn't see this pool before the game-so I didn't vote on that one) but I picked Washington to win because of the Jets lack of Chad Pennington.  I was rooting for the jets but unfortunately my fear was right as the offense couldn't get anything going.  

Anyway, as far as the best remaining game this week-watch Oakland @ Tennessee (if it's televised).  This is gonna be the first key matchup this season and we may see them play again...in the AFC Championship.

I know the feeling, I won't be able to watch more than 2 or 3 or Carolina's games (my favorite team) or of the Bears (my 2nd favorite team).  Fortunately, they televise just about every Lions game here (yes clear out in Oregon) so I will be able to see my favorite ACTIVE player-Joey Harrington.

Actually, I think that Detroit is on the rise.  I mean, 2 years ago they won like 1 or 2 games.  The same was true of last year but about 5 of them had very close/last minute finishes.  In my opinion, Harrington (who I got to watch in person in college) has the tools and ability to become the next Joe Montana (who was my favorite player)-just watching him reminds me of Montana-same style of play.  If Charles Rogers pays off (Randy Moss comes to mind) this could be a very powerful offense, last year they really lacked a go to reciever.  Unfortunately, this year isn't gonna be real great because they lost James Stewart (starting RB) for the season during the preseason (yes-preseason is way to long) so they're going to depend on their passing game a lot more than they should.  Anyway, watch to see a lot of improvement out of Detriot this year.

It seems like the length of the preseason is just too long (I mean it's like 5 weeks!).  Now, I do understand the neccessity of warming the veterans and giving the rookies first hand experience in an actual game environment-but because of the amount of violence in the sport, it gets to a point where the preseason become more damaging than helpful.  Names like Michael Vick and Chad Pennington come to mind (and thats just this year-every year at least one star gets seriously hurt).  I just think they need to shorten the preseason to maybe 3 weeks.  That should give adiquate time to get everybody all warmed up and will minimize the risk of losing a franchise player for the season before the season actually starts.

The injury reserve rule is a little weird but there is a reason for it.  OK, an NFL team is allowed to have 53 players total and 45 of them active on a game day (so they have to have 8 inactive).  The injury reserve does not count for either of these lists so teams used to cheat and found a way to have a large roster by putting players they needed later down the road on the injury reserve.  This way they were able to use the injury reserve as a practice squad and have more than 53 players on their roster (they could then take a few off injury reserve and activate them and just adjust the lineup).  To help stop this cheating, the injury reserve was made into a season ending situation for a player who is placed on it.  That way, the teams couldn't use it as anther practice squad and then activate players later in the season.  This is why when an important player goes down they are not placed on injury reserve and are just put on the inactive list.

I hope that makes sense (I know it's a little confusing).

Glad to help.

That took me a long time to figure out when I first learned about it.  It seems like one of those rules that they really shouldn't have had to make-but because of people trying to gain an upper hand they had to.