Daily Norseman 2021 Pick ‘Em and Survivor Sign-ups Coming Monday

Be ready for when it drops

We have officially made it to the start of the 2021 NFL season, ladies and gentlemen, and as we have every year that I can remember we will be hosting both NFL Pick ‘Em and Survivor Pools through the good folks at Yahoo! Sports.

I like to give people fair warning as to when these pools will open up so they can be ready for them, so that’s what we’re doing here.

• Sign-ups for the 2021 Daily Norseman NFL Pick ‘Em Pool will open up at noon Central time on Monday, 6 September.
• The sign-ups for the 2021 Daily Norseman NFL Survivor Pool will open up at 12:30 PM Central time on Monday, 6 September.

Both of these sign-ups will get their own separate posts here on our front page with full instructions on what you have to do in order to take part.

Allow me to go over some of the rules for both of these pools.

We’ll start with the Survivor Pool, as the rules for that one are pretty simple. Each week, you will pick the winner of one NFL game. If that team does not win. . .well, you’re out of the pool. If that team does win, you advance to the next week, but you can’t pick that team again for the rest of the season.

It sounds difficult, but we did have one reader go through an entire season without taking an L once, so it can be done.

Picks for the Survivor Pool will be due five minutes before the kickoff of the noon Central games each week. If you want to pick the Thursday Night Football matchup each week, I believe you can, but I know that sometimes things get busy during the week and things can be affected by injury reports and what not, so we won’t penalize people for not getting picks in by Thursday.

For the Pick ‘Em Pool, the games will be picked straight-up, no spreads. In order to add some degree of difficulty, Yahoo! allows us the ability to use what are called “Confidence Points” to give you a final tally for each week. For each game you pick, you will assign a value based on how certain you are of that team winning. If you pick the game correctly, you receive that number of points for your weekly total. If you’re wrong, you take a zero for that game.

In a bit of a departure. . .at least from what I can remember. . .from past years, we will eliminate the two lowest scores that you accumulate over the course of the season. So, if you have a week where you forget to log in and take a zero, it won’t hurt you too much. I believe in past years we only eliminated one low score, but I might be wrong on that. In any case, your two lowest scores will be thrown out.

Selections for the Pick ‘Em Pool will be due five minutes before the kickoff of each game. That way if you miss the early games on Sunday for whatever reason or something else happens, you can still get in on the late games so that you don’t completely blow up a week.

If you’re going to join one or both of these pools, I’d like to ask that you not be one of those people that participates for the first week or two and then just stops. I mean, if you bomb out of the Survivor Pool in Week 1, that’s one thing. . .it’s happened to me more times than I can count. But if you join the Pick ‘Em Pool, please make an effort to submit your picks every week.

With that, be sure to keep an eye out for the post for both pools opening on Monday. I believe that Yahoo! limits participation in each pool to 100 people, so there is limited space. So, if you want to match wits with your fellow Minnesota Vikings fans throughout the season, this will be your opportunity.

Best of luck to everyone that joins our NFL Pick ‘Em and Survivor Pools for the 2021 NFL season!