Running a survivor pool is one of the most fun things you can do with a group of friends, coworkers, or a fantasy football league during the NFL season. It's low-maintenance once it's set up, it keeps everyone engaged all season long, and it doesn't require anyone to know much about football beyond picking a winner each week.
This guide walks you through everything you need to know to run one well, from setting the rules before Week 1 to closing out the season at the end.
Step 1: Decide on the Basic Format
Before you invite anyone, you need to nail down the core rules. These are the decisions that shape everything else.
How many entries per player? Most pools allow multiple entries per person, which makes for a bigger pool and gives players more chances to stay alive, though it also means one player can dominate the standings if their entries clear the field. Some commissioners cap it at one entry per person to keep things simple and spread out the competition.
Can teams be used more than once? The default is no, and that constraint is the whole game: it is what turns Week 3 into a decision instead of a coin flip, because spending your best team early means not having it in December. Allowing reuse makes a pool much easier to survive, which suits a small group who would rather it ran to Week 18 than ended in October.
How does it end? The most common format is winner-take-all. If more than one entry survives all the way to the end, they're co-champions and usually share first place evenly. Decide this before Week 1 and put it in writing.
What is the group playing for? Whatever you settle on, settle it before Week 1 and write it down with the rest of the rules. It is the one thing everybody assumes they already agree on, and the one nobody wants to discuss for the first time in December.
Step 2: Set Your Rules and Write Them Down
Vague rules cause drama. The best commissioners over-communicate before the season starts and never have to referee a dispute mid-season.
Here are the rules you need to define clearly:
Pick deadline. When do picks lock? The safest approach is locking picks at each game's kickoff time. That means Thursday night games lock Thursday, Sunday games lock Sunday, and Monday night games lock Monday. Most pools instead set a 1pm Sunday deadline, where everyone's picks for that week are revealed all at once, covering every game from the early Sunday slate through Monday night.
What happens if someone forgets to pick? Most pools eliminate the entry automatically. Some commissioners give a one-time grace period or mulligan, and some enable auto-picking, which selects the biggest available favorite for anyone who misses the deadline instead of eliminating them outright. Whatever you decide, apply it consistently and announce it ahead of time.
Ties. NFL games occasionally end in a tie. Decide upfront whether that counts as a loss (the entry is eliminated) or a win (the entry survives) for anyone who picked one of the two teams. It's a rare rule to need, but an entry's season shouldn't come down to a judgment call made after the fact.
Double-pick weeks. Some commissioners designate a week, often around Thanksgiving or late in the season, where every entry must submit two picks instead of one. It's a great way to thin the field and shake things up. If you plan to do this, announce it before the season starts rather than springing it on players mid-season.
Mulligans, sometimes called extra lives. Some pools allow each entry one free pass per season: a week where a losing pick doesn't eliminate them. Mulligans make pools run longer and reduce early-season chaos. They also add complexity. Decide whether they fit your group's style.
Step 3: Invite Your Players
Once your rules are set, it's time to fill the pool.
Start with your core group and let word of mouth do the rest. Survivor pools grow naturally. One person tells a coworker, a coworker tells their friend group, and suddenly you have 40 entries. Set a cap if you want to keep it manageable, or let it grow and enjoy the bigger field.
When you send invites, include:
- A clear summary of the rules
- The pick deadline format
- What the pool is playing for, and how it is settled at the end
- Where players will submit their picks each week
That last point matters more than people think. If your players don't know where to go to make their pick, you'll spend Week 1 answering the same question 20 times.
Step 4: Settle Anything Off the Platform Before Week 1
If your group has arranged anything between themselves, close it out before Week 1 picks are due. Leave it until Week 3 and it gets awkward fast, because by then some of the people you are chasing have already been eliminated and have nothing left to play for.
Sunday Survivor is pool-management software and nothing else: it does not collect, hold, transfer or distribute any of it, deliberately, because handling other people's money means becoming a regulated money transmitter and that has nothing to do with running a good pool. Whatever your group has agreed is between your group, so build it into your timeline rather than assuming it is handled somewhere.
Step 5: Manage Picks Each Week
This is where most of the commissioner's ongoing work happens if you're running things manually. On Sunday Survivor, tracking picks, grading results, and updating standings all happen automatically, so this step is mostly about the human side: reminding players and keeping the group engaged.
Each week, here's what has to happen, whether a platform handles it or you do:
- Remind players to submit their pick. A Friday or Saturday reminder goes a long way. People get busy. A simple message to the group chat saves you from chasing down missing picks Sunday morning.
- Track who picked what. You need a record of every entry's pick each week, both to grade results and to enforce the no-repeat-team rule.
- Grade results after games are played. Which picks won? Which lost? Who is eliminated?
- Update standings. Players want to know who's still alive and what everyone picked. Transparency keeps engagement high.
If you're running this manually with a spreadsheet, it's doable for a small pool but becomes a real time commitment as the pool grows. Most commissioners who've done it both ways strongly prefer using a platform that handles grading and standings automatically.
One situation deserves its own plan before it happens: the pick that never arrives. Someone was traveling, someone is certain they submitted and did not, someone had a real emergency. Whatever you decide to do about it, the safest version of that decision is one the rest of the pool can watch you make. On Sunday Survivor, a commissioner can add a pick for an entry that has none, as long as the game being picked has not kicked off yet, and every one of those actions is published to the pool: who did it, when, and whether it beat the deadline. A commissioner cannot change a pick a member already submitted, cannot see a pick before it is revealed to everyone, and cannot add one to their own entry once the deadline has passed.
Step 6: Handle Eliminations Cleanly
On Sunday Survivor, this is automatic too: the moment a pick's game is final and grading runs, eliminated entries get an email letting them know, with no commissioner action required. If you're running a pool the old-fashioned way, that message is on you to send, promptly and professionally, for every entry that goes out each week.
Either way, keep eliminated players informed of how the rest of the season plays out. Many stay engaged as spectators, rooting against whoever they wanted to beat. That ongoing engagement is part of what makes survivor pools great.
Step 7: Close Out the Season
When the pool ends, whether in Week 4 or Week 18, finish it properly and promptly. Don't leave the winner waiting two weeks after the final survivor is crowned. It's a small thing that reflects well on you as a commissioner and makes people want to play again next year.
Send a quick recap to the whole group: who won, how many weeks they survived, maybe a fun note about their toughest pick of the season. It closes the loop and builds anticipation for next year. On Sunday Survivor, this happens automatically every week of the season, not just at the end. An AI-written recap goes out to the whole group after Monday night football, so it's one less thing on your list all season, not just at the finish.
A Few Things That Make a Good Commissioner Great
Be consistent. Apply the rules the same way for everyone, every week. The moment you make an exception for one player, you've created a problem for yourself. You will still hit situations that call for judgment. The way to make that call safely is in the open, where the whole group can see what you did, rather than in a private message nobody else can check.
Communicate proactively. Don't wait for players to ask questions. Push reminders, post standings, and keep the group informed. Active commissioners run better pools.
Keep it fun. Trash talk, weekly recaps, close-call alerts: the social layer around the pool is half the experience. Lean into it.
Plan for edge cases before they happen. What if a game gets postponed? What if a player claims they submitted a pick but it didn't register? Think through the unlikely scenarios ahead of time so you're not making it up on the spot under pressure.
Take the credit. Running a pool is a job nobody pays you for, and a group tends to notice the commissioner only in the week something goes wrong. Every other job on a football Sunday comes with a uniform. There is a COMMISH shirt in the shop.
The Easiest Way to Run Your Pool
The biggest quality-of-life upgrade any commissioner can make is switching from a spreadsheet to a purpose-built platform. Automatic pick grading, live standings, pick reminders, and no-repeat-team enforcement, all handled for you so you can focus on the fun parts of being a commissioner.
Sunday Survivor is built specifically for NFL survivor pools, with a clean interface for both commissioners and players. It's free for pools up to 10 entries and straightforward to set up.
Start your pool at sundaysurvivor.com →
Want to go deeper? Check out our guides on what a survivor pool actually is, the biggest mistakes players make, and what to do when Week 18 ends with nobody having won.