Better than picking favorites

The rule

Straight-up picks with a market price: at least 20, and at least 2 more wins than picking the favorite in every one of the same games would have given (steps +2, +3 and +5). The favorite is the side the same no-margin price made more likely to win; games without a price or at even odds are left out of both counts.

Holders now

3

Window

season

Picks that count. Picks we recorded before kickoff; picks whose time before kickoff was set by the publishing platform (timestamped by the publishing platform) or shown by a web archive copy of the page (archive record); and, for ESPN, CBS Sports and NFL.com, picks read after the game where the outlet's own published record for that expert matches our recount (per the outlet's published record). Any other pick read after the game can only lower a record, and any known loss ends a run. Points use the fair market price at the moment of each pick, with the bookmaker margin taken out; a straight-up pick without a two-sided price at that moment is left out, a spread or total pick without a price on its own line counts at even odds, and a pick read after the game counts as a miss (−1).