We asked CPP Nation recently what rules their leagues used. We got some interesting results, from payout distribution to penalties for missed picks and some pretty interesting nuances that maybe you can use to spice up your league!

Bye week confidence points

16 leagues had 16 points for highest team (eliminate the lowest confidence points for bye teams), 12 had 1 point for lowest team (eliminate highest confidence points for bye teams). Another league substitutes college games for games on bye.

Pick lock

12 leagues lock at kickoff of individual games, 8 lock on kickoff of first game (usually Thursdays)

Payouts

Most leagues went with some sort of payout where the season winner gets the bigger payout, and the weekly winners get a smaller payout. But there was a lot of interesting variations off that.

This league paid out overall winners halfway through the season AND at the end of the season:

• “We do recognize weekly leaders but payouts are for 1st, 2nd and 3rd at the halfway mark of the season and at the end.”

• “I pay out 3 sports weekly $300 $200 $100 for 1st thru 3rd. I also pay top 5 overall about like this $1700 $1000 $550 $300 $200. Im trying to get more people to pay a 4th a pot weekly. Entry is $100 but raising it to $120 this season.”
• “We pay out about 40% of the pot for weekly winners, then split remaining pot 50/30/15/5….then pay $5 for last place.”

Another league that pays out last place:

• “But my twist is that the last place person gets their buy in back. But they have to pick all games. Can’t skip any. I give a break on 1 or 2 Thursday games up to Thanksgiving. After T-day no exceptions. All we have a winner if you pick all the Lossing teams in a week. Same payout as the weekly first place team.”

And one that pays a weekly prize if they get all the picks wrong:

• “We have a winner if you pick all the losing teams in a week.”

Missed Pick Rules

One issue many leagues have to deal with is when someone misses a pick. Sometimes life happens and we forget, but it kinda sucks to eliminate your whole season because you missed a pick. On the other hand, you don’t want to reward people for missing a pick. So here are how some of our readers handled that:

• “If you do not make any picks by kickoff of first game, the underdog for each game is automatically selected and assigned a confidence pick from 1-16.”
• “If somebody misses their pick for the early game that week they lose the highest points available instead of the lowest.”
• “Missed weeks get lowest score minus 1.”

In the CPP leagues, we drop the 3 lowest scoring weeks. If you miss a week, you just drop it. It also encourages teams to take more risk.

Unique Rules to Spice Things Up

This is the fun part. We have a bunch leagues that have some unique rules:

• “We have a random generated entry every week. If it wins any of the top 3 spots, that spot pays double the following week.” My dad actually suggested I have AI make a pick each week. I just might have it read this website and come up with its own picks and see what happens.
• “Last game of the week is locked as the highest point (week one the last MNF game is 16 points for everyone).” This one is interesting. Has the potential for high drama for the Monday Night game.
• Negative confidence points for wrong pick (instead of zero). This punishes wrong picks more.
• As a twist off a survivor pool: “My league does a king and loser pool. Where you pick one winner and one loser.”

Do you have interesting rules that make your league uniquely fun? Put it in the comments below!