Hello and welcome to Big Ten Football Survivor - Season 2026!
Either you are a member of the Off Tackle Republic community or you have been invited to participate in this competition by some degenerate friend or family member. I'm sorry. No refunds.
The goal of B1G survivor is simple: be the last one standing in the survivor pool.
The Rules
1) Each week* you must pick 1^ Big Ten football team to win a game that week.
2) If the team you picked loses, you are eliminated. You may now participate in the losers' pool. More on that later.
3) Picks must be made before kickoff of the game in question.
4) You may only pick each Big Ten team once. Be careful. If you want to complete a perfect season you must save your projected Big Ten champion until the Big Ten championship game. The Big Ten championship game takes place in week 14 this year.
5) Each Big Ten team may be picked against a maximum of three times. This rule is in place to prevent people from picking whichever team is playing Purdue for each of Purdue's nine conference games. Variety is the spice of life and it makes me sad seeing all of you rooting against Purdue every week.
6) You may pick up to THREE victories over FCS teams. I don't want all the picks the first four weeks to be over FCS teams. This shouldn't be too hard of a rule to follow. See the tiebreakers and additional notes for more on FCS teams.
*Week 0 is included as part of Week 1
^We want a perfect season to include all 18 teams. Since there are only 13 weeks in the regular season this year, four weeks must include picking two teams. To space out these picks and keep everyone on a roughly equal footing as we progress, the requirement is that an extra pick must be submitted somewhere in weeks 1-4, weeks 5-7, week 8-10, and weeks 11-13.
Tiebreakers
In the event that the last few survivors are eliminated in the same week (or there are multiple perfect seasons), there are some tiebreakers in place to crown one true champion.
1) All members of the BRAVE group are automatically placed above members of the COWARDS group. See additional notes.
2) Strength of victory over FBS opponents. Technically strength of victory is a percentage, but I'm going to keep this even simpler. Add up all the wins collected by each of the FBS teams defeated by your weekly picks. If you pick against a team multiple times you get multiple times their number of wins. For example, say you pick Michigan over The Ohio State in week 13. Naturally Michigan is going to win that game and finish off the Buckeyes 0-12 season. This was probably the third time you picked against hapless Buckeyes, so you get three x 0 wins added to your score. Note that you can pick your Big Ten teams to defeat FCS opponents, but it won't collect wins towards this tiebreaker. Also, note that you should not take any comments in this article as gambling advice. If you do, please hold AlmaOtter responsible.
3) First person to submit their pick to the comments in the final week of the competition.
Losers' Pool
Much more challenging. After being eliminated from the survivor pool, you continue to make picks. You must follow all the rules of the main pool but now you are picking teams to lose. The multiple picks in weeks 1-4, 5-7, 8-10, and 11-13 must still occur. You can still only pick against teams a maximum of three times including the times you picked against them in the survivor pool. There are no tiebreakers. All losers are equal.
Additional Notes
Since I did not get this article up last week, I will allow people that want to pick USC as their week 0/week 1 pick to do so. It seems like an easy way to get eliminated once the conference bottom feeders hit conference play, but what do I know? Take the free win. I dare you.
Invite as many people to this pool as you want to. It's an open competition and the more the merrier.
You will be allowed to miss up to one week in the first three weeks but must catch up to the pack by the following week of play. That means making at least two picks the following week instead of one. This is in place to allow for stragglers to join the competition but will fall out of play once we hit the heart of conference season.
You are allowed to submit all or some future picks at any time. This is to help plan around travel or forgetfulness. These picks can be changed up until kickoff of the game in question.
If you submit a pick that breaks the rules, I will attempt to warn you ahead of time, but no promises. Sign up to the commenting system to get notifications when I AT you.
I make mistakes transcribing your picks from the comments to the spreadsheet. Sometimes I forget someone or think they are eliminated when they aren't. When I make a mistake regarding YOU know that it was targeted. I do not like you and desperately want to see you eliminated please let me know and keep playing. I'll get it corrected for the following week's article.
Want to challenge yourself more? Pick zero games over FCS teams. Participants in the survivor pool who do so will participate in the BRAVE group. Participants that pick any games over FCS teams will participate in the COWARDS group. The groups are meaningless other than the fact each user's group will be in the weekly standings. Yes, I am trying to bait you into playing on Legendary difficulty.
Week 0/Week 1 Games
All times ET
Saturday, August 29
USC Trojans v. San Jose State Spartans - USC won. It's a free win but something of a Trojan horse. If you want to pick USC from week 0, specify in your comment. Otherwise I'll assume you mean USC from week 1.
Thursday, September 3
Rutgers Scarlet Knights v. UMass Minutemen, 6 ET
Minnesota Golden Gophers v. Eastern Illinois (FCS), 8 ET
Illinois Fighting Illini v. UAB Blazers, 9 ET
Friday, September 4
Purdue Boilermakers v. Indiana State Sycamores (FCS), 7 ET
Michigan State Spartans v. Toledo Rockets, 8 ET
USC Trojans v. Fresno State Bulldogs, 9 ET
Saturday, September 5
Indiana Hoosiers v. North Texas Mean Green, 12 ET
Nebraska Cornhuskers v. Ohio Bobcats, 12 ET
The Ohio State Buckeyes v. Ball State Cardinals, 12:30 ET
Oregon Ducks v. Boise State Broncos, 3:30 ET
Penn State Nittany Lions v. Marshall Thundering Herd, 3:30 ET
Iowa Hawkeyes v. Northern Illinois Huskies, 4:15 ET
Michigan Wolverines v. Western Michigan, 7:30 ET
Maryland Terrapins v. Hampton Pirates (FCS), 8 ET
Northwestern Wildcats v. South Dakota State Jackrabbits (FCS), 8 ET
UCLA Bruins at California Golden Bears, 10:30 ET
BoilerUp89's pick for week 0/week 1: I may change my pick before the games, but for now call me a coward because I'm getting two of my maximum of three FCS picks out of the way to start the season. Give me Purdue over Indiana [State] and Maryland over Hampton. One of these teams has to win when they play each other in November, but I'll be honest: I suspect both will have just 1 victory entering that week.
