Depends on how strict your definition of American football is. Many people will play American football, but they substitute tackling for something else that reduces the likelihood of injury, such as pulling a flag attached to the person's waist or touching them with both hands. Like Rol said, very few people actually play tackle football beyond maybe giving it a try in school, but there's a good number that will play a variant which bends the rules a little (or a lot) to make it less dangerous/painful.

Anyway this is long overdue but here's the standings for the prediction league going into Week 2.

Pretty solid Week 1 overall, especially considering that everyone was virtually handed a loss right off the bat with the PIT-CLE tie. The league was unanimous on three games this week, and got two of them wrong (TB@NO, NYJ@DET), with LAR@OAK being the only successful pick in that category. Almost unanimous (15 of 16 users) was BUF@BAL and CHI@GB, where the league went 2-0.

I managed to come in first for this opening week, largely aided by a relatively unpopular pick for WAS to beat ARI. Was a little surprised that more people didn't pick the fightin' Snyders, but hey. Carl, Level1Death, ljigga, and Rol all managed to post 10 correct picks before the second week as well, generally by playing it safe. A lot of the users who went for what would be classified as an upset by last years records were the ones who suffered the most, especially Angelus.

Turning to Week 2, there's a lot of seeming tossups. A rematch of last year's AFC Championship is arguably the highlight of the week's slate, but KC@PIT, CAR@ATL and MIN@GB (if Rodgers is healthy) should all be very good games as well.

I have a question.

Do NFL fans actually play  American Football ?

#2-B: Prediction Points (PP): The person with the most, second most, and third most correct picks in a week will earn 4, 2, and 1 prediction points, respectively. There are no tiebreakers, so if multiple people finish in first, they will each receive 4 PP.

And I pick BAL.

Responding to the bolded, that only extends as far down as three people go. You don't get awarded third place (and all the benefits therein) for being the sixth best predictor that week.

So the rules have changed then? I am misunderstanding.

11-5 is you at #1

10-6 is 4 people at #2, you give 2-5th place points, so 5th place gets points but 6th don't huh.

9-7 is 7 people at #3

We at #3 have the third most correct picks as outlined in the rule.

I ran the prediction league that way for at least the last three straight years. When I first read your rules in the early posts of the thread, I too thought that you'd maintain the same system I had used for so long, so I can perfectly understand why Farsala thought the same.

What you call counterintuitive was something that I had filed as lucky circumstance, just like earning points with a negative record. Other lucky circumstances would be a week where everyone is within two games, so everyone would get at least 1 PP; such a thing happened for real.

The rules haven't changed; they state that the person with the first, second, and third most correct picks will receive points, not that everyone with the first, second, and third best result gets points. Since four people simultaneously finished 2nd, they each get the points that would normally be given to second place (as I'm not doing tiebreakers). Third place (at least, to me) implies that you were the third best predictor in the league for that week, not simply that you posted the third best record.

If two people ahead of you tie for second place in the Olympics, and you're the next behind them, you don't get 3rd place and the bronze metal that comes with. They both tie for second, and you get fourth. College football works the same way, if two teams in the rankings have an equal number of votes, they tie for the spot for that week and whoever's behind is two numbers later (so if they tie for 2nd, the team behind them is 4th). I can't think of a single system that does it like you're talking about.

Beyond that, giving points just for posting the third best results feels very arbitrary. If, say, a prediction week ends with 1 person at 11-5 and 2 people at 10-6, and you were the next best record at 8-8, you'd get a point. But if the three people ahead were instead 11-5, 10-6, and 9-7, you wouldn't get a point. You'd be awarded a point not for anything you did, but simply because the people in front of you did better. That feels totally counterintuitive.