Football Pool

One of my stories I love to share is about the first football pool I was in.  I was straight out of school, working at my first engineering firm, starting right when the football season started.  It was simple, you pay in $2 each week (or was it $5) and you pick the winner for each game and rank the games (10 being the game you were most sure of, 1 being that game that's going to be really close).  Each week, high score took all the winnings.  Ben ran the pool and come Tuesday morning, we'd divvy up the entries and run the numbers.  A pattern started to emerge, Ben and I would do well consistently each week, but not quite good enough to win and take home the weekly winnings.  Each week someone else in the office would take the cash and the only redeeming thing was that it was tradition for the winner to buy pastries and pocket the extra cash. By the end of the season, neither Ben or I had won a single game.

So come the next season, I suggested to Ben we change things slightly.  Instead of paying out 100% of the money each week, I proposed we hold back a little and include a season winner based on the cumulative score.  Guess who took home the big pay day the next two years?

The moral of the story is that if the rules don't work for you, change the rules!

Fast forward many many years to now.  I'm back working at another engineering firm and decided to join the football pool.  This year it's just a straight picked.  And I've been doing horrible.  Each week I'm decent or not so good.  Forget taking home the season end jack pot.  I'm not even coming close to winning a weekly game either.  I realized that back in the earlier years I had forgotten a critical component.  In addition to learning to change the rules, I also had learned to delegate.  I would call my brother back in high school and he would work with his friend Pat to make the picks.  Basically I just provided the cash for the entries and I never did give the guys a cut.  Well this year I was on my own.  And it wasn't working.  I tried to get my brother to help - no luck.  He's been out of the country for years and hadn't been following sports.  I even tried to talk him into hitting up Pat for help, even though it had been several years since he had touched base with him.  Nothing - I was stuck figuring it out on my own.

And I won this week!  I think.  Yesterday I got a call from a coworker and first thing she said was "really! Really,". We both had picked all the games correctly.  It was all down to Monday nights game last night.  And since Seattle was pretty sure to win it was all coming down to the final score which is the tiebreaker.  I was stunned yesterday that I had picked twelve games correctly with about four major upsets.  I had decided to take the risk and go against the grain.  Another coworker who takes sports seriously kept asking me how I did it.  Honestly, I picked the cities I've either lived in or had relatives live in.  I have a feeling this is a fluke but I'll take it!