Barrington Henry -- Office Pool Authority for Pro Football

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NFL Office Pool Advice

We run many features covering NFL football office pools that require simple 'pick the winner without regard for the point spread' rules. We figured though it was worthwhile to bring on board a true expert in the field, and Barrington surely qualifies as one of the best.

With picks, research, and optimized pick sets geared to specific rules, he may just be your single stop answer to winning the pool this week and this year!

Barrington Henry:
The Office Pool Authority

Barrington is a bonafide winner in straight up football office pool type events. He has won multiple prizes, both weekly and season long, in the large Las Vegas "pick every game" contests. He will write a column every week focused strictly on straight up handicapping.

"If you send up a weather vane or put your thumb up in the air every time you want to do something different, to find out what people are going to think about it, you're going to limit yourself. That's a very strange way to live." -- Jessye Norman

The Henry Rules

#1: Know the odds of a team winning
#2: Upsets happen
#3: Take the odds of winning and adjust them
#4: Don't get crazy
#5: The last game matters
#6: Season has stages
#7: Look at the won-loss record
#8: Division, Conference, Non Conference
#9: Travel Counts

The Henry Rules
#10: The NFL means pain

People get hurt playing football. Some guys are crazy for this pain. They like it and play better. Other guys run off the field and don't want to get hit again. You've got to figure out which is it.

Read the injury report. I'm not just going to hand you all my secrets for nothing. You got to figure this out for yourself and it's real powerful when you do. You got to know what the injury means.

The Henry Rules
#11: Loser teams have excuses ready

One game don't matter in baseball. It don't matter in pro basketball. It is EVERYTHING in football. Lose one game in college and you are out of #1 ranking most years. You got to talk about the game and what happened for a whole week until the next week. Think about that and rule #10 at the same time.

Suppose you be injured and you got a game coming up. Or maybe you just played back to back big games. You see where I'm going with this. Loser teams already have their excuses thought up before the game even starts. Some weeks they even tell people their excuse ahead of time. You hear some player laying down the excuse, you best think about the other team getting an easy W.

Back to rule number three:

The Henry Rules
#3: Take the odds of winning and adjust them

Away Team Home Team Spread Likely Winner Odds of Winning*

Tampa Bay San Francisco 11 Tampa Bay 83%

Baltimore Pittsburgh -9.5 Pittsburgh 78%

Arizona Dallas -9 Dallas 78%

Green Bay Cincinnati -9 Cincinnati 78%

Buffalo New England -9 New England 78%

Minnesota Carolina -8 Carolina 77%

Kansas City San Diego -6 San Diego 70%

Philadelphia Denver -3.5 Denver 64%

Chicago Detroit -3 Detroit 62%

Jacksonville St. Louis +3 Jacksonville 56%

Cleveland Houston -2 Houston 56%

Miami New Orleans -2 New Orleans 56%

Washington N.Y. Giants -2 N.Y. Giants 56%

Oakland Tennessee +1.5 Tennessee 53%

*=smoother chart

Now you shift. You take all this learning you have about odds of winning in situations and you move these numbers up and down.

Don't go crazy. I'm not saying you take that 78% favorite and shift it to picking the dog. Don't do that. I'm talking maybe 5%, maybe 10%.

If you know nothing about football then just flat out leave it alone.

Also See:
Henry's Column week seven
Henry's Column week six
Henry's Column week five
Henry's Column week four

Straight-up quick picks
Full Story" Office Pool Picks (Thurs.)
Office Pool W-L records & standings

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