Greetings, Earthling.

You have been awakened from stasis for a mission of utmost importance: The 28th Ironman Football Survivor Pool.

August 23, 2026

Much like Ryland Grace, you will begin each week with:

• A sense of dread
• A spreadsheet of questionable choices
• And the knowledge that one wrong pick means instant, catastrophic elimination.

Mission Overview

Your task is simple in theory, impossible in practice:

• Each week, select one NFL team to win.
• You may never select the same team twice.
• If your chosen team wins, you live to fight another day.
• If they lose or tie, your pod depressurizes and you drift silently into the void.

This is not a drill.
This is not a simulation.
This is football… in space.

Operational Hazards

Expect to encounter:

• Teams that look unbeatable until they suddenly aren’t
• Injuries that defy medical science
• Coaches whose decisions suggest alien interference
• Fellow contestants who swear they “totally knew” the upset was coming

Victory Conditions

To win, you must outlast all other participants — a feat requiring courage, cunning, and the ability to pretend you “always believed in the Texans.”

The last survivor will be honored as our Ryland Grace: the lone human who somehow guessed correctly for an entire season without repeating a team or collapsing into despair.

RSVP

Confirm your participation so we can assign you a pod, calibrate your life-support systems, and prepare your weekly panic cycles.

Failure to RSVP will result in your status being updated to: “Missing — presumed eaten by astrophage.”

Enter before the week 1 kick-off, which is Wednesday, September 9! Note you can continue to add lines in week one as long as there is a game left that has not been played, including the Week 1 Monday night game(s)! Check out the rules page for all of the rules of this game.

If you have trouble making your picks, e-mail the Ironman and give him your pick. He will handle it.