Frequently Asked.
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The 2026 season locks at 11:59 PM ET on Friday, August 28, 2026 — the night before Week 1 kicks off. After this:
▸ Your team record predictions, postseason picks, and conference locks are permanent.
▸ Individual game picks remain editable each week until that game's kickoff (typically Thursday 5:00 PM ET for Saturday games).
If you make picks after the season locks, you miss the +28 conference lock bonus and any postseason scoring. Pick early.
Five different ways to score:
▸ Rule 1 · Conf Lock (+7 each). Lock a Power 4 conference at preseason. If you don't change or remove a committed pick in it all season, +7 at season end. Max +28.
▸ Rule 2 · Correct Pick (+1 each). Per game you pick correctly across 478 in-scope (Power 4 + Notre Dame) regular-season games.
▸ Rule 3 · Weekly Accuracy (5-25% bonus). 60% → +5%, 70% → +10%, 80% → +15%, 90% → +20%, 100% → +25% on that week's base points.
▸ Rule 4 · Team Record (+1 or +2). Your game picks set each in-scope team's projected win total. Exact win total = +2, off by one win = +1 (losses follow from the schedule).
▸ Rule 5 · Postseason (+2 to +7). Conference finalist (either side) +2, conference champion +3, playoff qualifier +2 (named or Group-of-Six marker), each round a team reaches (QF/SF/Final) +2, national champion +7.
Full breakdown: /rules.
If you have a previously-saved pick for that game (e.g. from preseason picks), that pick stays locked in. If you have no previously-saved pick, the game scores zero — both Rule 2 and Rule 3 treat it as unpicked.
This is why we send a lock-warning email Thursday 12 PM ET if you have unpicked games for that week.
It's the most strategic part of MVPicker. The deal: opt in to lock a Power 4 conference at preseason (you can lock it even with a few games unpicked), and if you keep every committed pick in it intact all season, you get +7 bonus points. Lock all four Power 4s for the +28 max.
The trick: conviction, not correctness. The bonus rewards your commitment, not your accuracy. You can be wrong on every locked pick and still earn the +7 by keeping the lock intact. So lock the conference you'd defend in front of your friends — even if your picks turn out to be wrong, you keep the bonus.
In preseason, unlocking is a clean, reversible opt-out. Once the season starts, though, changing or removing a committed pick in a locked conference breaks the lock permanently — no re-set. (Filling a game you never picked is fine.)
No, by design. The "conviction" property of the lock is the whole point — if a broken lock could be re-set, there'd be no real commitment.
Once a conference is broken for the season, it can be re-locked starting in next season's preseason. The other three Power 4 conferences remain independent and lockable.
Unlocking is a clean reversal — you just give up the +7 commitment. As long as you haven't edited any pick in that conference yet, you can re-lock later.
The difference from breaking: unlocking is voluntary and reversible; breaking happens automatically when you edit a locked pick and is permanent. The Conf Lock tab in your picks page will warn you before breaking.
▸ Public pools show up in the Browse directory at /pools/browse. Anyone can join with one click.
▸ Private pools are unlisted. To join, someone shares an invite link OR you enter the pool name + password manually on the Browse page.
Both pool types use the same scoring and leaderboard mechanics. The visibility setting only affects how people find and join.
A pool needs a manager. The manager handles invite links, the lock/unlock toggle, and is the accountable person if anything goes weird with the pool mid-season. If managers could leave freely, pools would get orphaned — nobody able to lock, regenerate invites, or course-correct.
The product decision: the creator role is permanent for the season. When the next season starts, you (and everyone else) can create new pools. If a current pool genuinely doesn't work for you anymore, you can stop participating without leaving — your picks stop counting toward that pool's leaderboard once you're inactive.
If you have a real edge case (e.g. the manager became inactive and the group needs help), message support and we'll handle it case by case.
Locking a pool freezes its membership. While locked: nobody new can join, and existing members can't leave. As the manager, you can lock or unlock at any time.
The use case: late in the season, you want to keep the standings honest by preventing late joiners. Or mid-season, you need to unlock to add someone who missed the original invite.
Locking a pool is separate from locking your picks — those are governed by the season lock date.
A few possibilities:
▸ You regenerated the invite. Regenerating issues a new code and immediately kills the old link. Share the new one.
▸ The link expired. Original invite links expire 30 days after the season starts. Regenerated links expire 30 days after the later of (regen date, season end).
▸ The pool got locked. Locked pools reject new joins, even via valid invite links. Unlock to re-enable.
From the pool detail page, hit "Regenerate Invite" to get a fresh link.
For security reasons, email changes go through support. Send us a message from the new address with your current handle and we'll verify and switch within 24 hours.
This requirement comes off when we add native email-change-with-verify in v1.x.
You get a 30-day grace period — sign in any time within that window to cancel the deletion. After 30 days:
▸ Your account is unrecoverable.
▸ Your handle is freed up for someone else.
▸ Your picks remain in scoring history (anonymized) — leaderboard integrity requires that.
▸ Pools you created get a new admin (next-most-senior member).
You can also export your data any time before deleting, no questions asked.
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