Draft Board

How it works

You draft 20 college football teams. You get 1 point every time one of your teams wins. Most points at the end of the season wins the pool.

12Power 4 teams

Three from each conference — ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC. One from Tier 1, one from Tier 2, one from Tier 3.

6Other conferences

One team from each: American, C-USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, Sun Belt. No tiers — take anybody.

2Loser picks

One Power 4 team and one non-Power-4 team. These score backwards — you get a point every time they lose.

Why there are tiers

Each Power 4 conference is split into three tiers, best teams down to worst.
You must take one team from each tier.
This stops anyone from grabbing Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana all at once.

Things to know

A team can't be one of your win picks and one of your Loser picks.
Only the regular season and conference championship games count. No bowls, no playoff.
The number on each card is that team's projected wins for 2026. On the Loser boards it's projected losses.

Ready? Go to the League tab to enter your picks. Browse the board below first to see who's in each tier.

Rules

The roster — 20 teams

Power 4 win picks (12). From each of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC you pick three teams: one from Tier 1, one from Tier 2, one from Tier 3.
Non-Power-4 win picks (6). One team from each of the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 and Sun Belt. No tiers — take whoever you want.
Loser picks (2). One Power 4 team from anywhere, and one team from any of the six non-Power-4 conferences. These two score their losses, not their wins.

A team can't appear on both sides of your roster — no owning someone for their wins and their losses at the same time.

Scoring

1 point per win from your eighteen win picks, 1 point per loss from your two Loser picks. Highest total takes it.

Regular season and conference championship games only. Bowls and the playoff do not count — a team's season ends when its conference title game does. That's exactly the window ESPN's FPI projections cover, so every projected number in this app lines up 1:1 with how you'll actually be scored.

The tiers

Tiers are set by the commissioner. As it happens they are also a clean descending split of ESPN's FPI projected win totals in all four conferences — no team is tiered above a team projected to win more games. So the ordering is arguable on the merits, not just by fiat.

Conf	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3
ACC	Miami · SMU · Clemson	Virginia · Louisville · Pitt · Virginia Tech	the other 10
Big Ten	Ohio State · Oregon · Indiana	Penn State · USC · Michigan · Iowa	the other 11
Big 12	Texas Tech · BYU · Utah	Houston · Arizona · Kansas St · TCU	the other 9
SEC	Georgia · Texas · Alabama	LSU · Texas A&M · Oklahoma · Tennessee · Ole Miss	the other 8

The Loser picks

Two slots. One is open to the entire Power 4 board, the other to all 69 teams across the six non-Power-4 conferences. Take the teams you think will be worst — every loss they take is a point for you. The draft board sorts both pools worst-first.

The chalk plays are Boston College and Stanford at 8.1 projected losses on the Power 4 side, and UL Monroe at 8.6 on the other. Splitting the slots across the two pools roughly doubles the board and makes the non-Power-4 half genuinely deep — five teams project 8.0 losses or worse, and nobody has a strong read on any of them.

Same open boards for everyone, so no advantage — but you get two teams to actively root against every Saturday, which is the point.

Why it's fair

Every person fills the same twenty slots from the same twenty pools. Nobody gets a bigger budget, a better draw or an extra blue chip. Structural advantage is zero by construction — the only thing separating rosters is who you believe in.

The tier split is what stops one person hoarding a conference. Without it a Big Ten haul could be Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana; with it, exactly one Big Ten blue chip per person and two real decisions underneath.

Straight talk about the near-locks. A few Tier 1 pools have an obvious answer — Texas Tech projects 10.8 in a Big 12 Tier 1 where nobody else clears 8.7, and Miami is 2.1 wins clear in the ACC. Those slots will mostly go the same way for everybody, and that's fine: identical picks cancel out. The pool gets decided in the tight Tier 1s (Ohio State / Oregon / Indiana are separated by a tenth of a win), every Tier 2 and Tier 3, the six non-Power-4 conferences, and the two Loser picks.

Notre Dame and UConn aren't pickable. Both are independents, so neither belongs to a conference pool. Leaving Notre Dame in would have made them an automatic 10.7-win freebie for whoever's slot they landed in.

Tiers freeze at kickoff. Live projections move during the season; the tiers you drafted under don't.

Tiebreakers

Most points from your six non-Power-4 win picks.
Most losses from your two Loser picks.
Most wins from your four Power 4 Tier 3 teams.

Data

Team records and projections come from ESPN's public college football API and refresh whenever you hit Refresh from ESPN on the Standings tab. Tier assignments set by the commissioner against the August 2026 preseason FPI snapshot.