First things first, I need to apologize. Last year, I ran the survivor pool with College and Magnolia. As you may remember, there was never an official wrap-up of the game. I can make excuses and say that my senior project took every single ounce of free-time and brain power last December, and well, yeah, I’m going to stand by that excuse. But the good news is I’m not in school anymore! Also, I partially blame it on the fact that about 15 of you won last year, and I didn’t really want to figure out a good way to pick a winner out of that group.

If you need a little refresher on the (updated) rules, or are otherwise new to the site and want to join this year, let me lay it out for you. In a survivor pool, each person has to make a pick every week of one team they think will win. If you’re wrong, you lose and are out of the game. If your pick wins, congrats! You will advance to the next week. But beware: once you pick a team, you may not pick that team again for the rest of the season. The game continues until all but one person has made correct choices; thus, they are the “survivor” and winner of the pool.

Like last year, we are going to restrict this to only being able to pick SEC teams. To make it more difficult (this is the big change from last year), you may only pick SEC teams that are playing against opponents from power conferences this season. This will likely require some planing ahead so that you don’t run into weeks like SOCON Saturday with no available teams left. I will be keeping track of everyones’ picks (please make them in the comment section of that week’s article), and while I will try to tell you if you’re making invalid pick, it’s up to you to be sure. It will be required that you make your pick BEFORE kickoff of the game you are picking.

That should cover all of the ground rules. If you have any other questions, let me know. Now, let’s get to the Week 1 games!

Pickable teams are in italics. All times are Eastern.

Saturday, September 1st

Ole Miss vs Texas Tech (in Houston) - Noon

#9 Auburn vs #6 Washington (in Atlanta, duh) - 3:30

#17 West Virginia vs Tennessee (in Charlotte) - 3:30

#1 Alabama vs Louisville (in Orlando) - 8:00

Sunday, September 2nd

#8 Miami vs #25 LSU (in Arlington) - 7:30

A little more difficult this year, huh?