How we record and grade expert picks

What we track

We start with the NFL. These outlets publish picks we can read on a public page every week:

• CBS Sports: CBS Sports' panel picks every game twice: straight up, and against the spread at a line CBS prints for each game.
• ESPN: ESPN's panel picks the winner of every game. It does not publish picks against the spread.
• NFL.com: NFL.com's editors pick a winner and a final score for every game. NFL.com grades them against the spread by comparing the predicted score with the FanDuel line printed in the article, and so do we.
• Daily Norseman: Writers at Daily Norseman, an SB Nation team site, post their picks on Tallysight. Tallysight stamps the time of each pick and records the line and price at that moment. They are a separate staff from SB Nation's national panel, and we track them separately.
• Pride of Detroit: Writers at Pride of Detroit, an SB Nation team site, post their picks on Tallysight. Tallysight stamps the time of each pick and records the line and price at that moment. They are a separate staff from SB Nation's national panel, and we track them separately.
• SB Nation: SB Nation's national NFL writers pick the winner of every game in a weekly article.
• Sports Illustrated: Sports Illustrated's MMQB staff pick the winner of every game in a weekly article.
• ProFootballTalk: Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk picks the winner and a final score of every game in a weekly column. The column prints no spread, so we grade the straight-up picks only.
• FOX Sports: Will Hill's weekly FOX Sports column picks selected games against the spread and on the total, each with a listed price.

Right now that is 56 experts, 9 outlets and 3,523 picks over 79 games. We plan to add more outlets.

One person gets one page. A CBS Sports expert who appears in both the straight-up and the spread table is one expert with two records. We do not merge people across outlets by name: two writers can share a name, and a team site's staff is not the same as its network's national panel.

When a pick counts

Every pick carries one of three labels:

• Recorded before kick-off: we saw the pick on the outlet's page before the game started. We keep a copy of the page and its fingerprint (SHA-256).
• Time-stamped before kick-off: we read the pick after the game, but the platform it was made on (Tallysight) records the time of each pick, and that time is before kick-off.
• Restored after the game: we read the pick from the outlet's page after the game, with no time stamp. This covers the weeks before we started on Oct 12, 2026. These picks are what the outlet shows today. We cannot prove they were not changed after the game, so we label them and keep them apart from picks we saw in advance.

All three count in the records, and every page says which is which. If an expert changes a pick after we have recorded it before kick-off, we keep the version we saw before kick-off.

Grading

• We use the final score, including overtime, from ESPN's public scoreboard.
• Straight up: the picked team wins, the pick wins. A tie is a push.
• Against the spread: we add the spread to the picked team's score. Ahead is a win, behind is a loss, level is a push. Each pick is graded at the spread its own outlet printed, or the line recorded when the pick was made, so two picks on the same game can use different numbers.
• Totals: the combined score against the line. Over the line wins an over pick, under wins an under pick, exactly on the line is a push.
• NFL.com spread picks come from the predicted score. If an editor picks the Chiefs 27-20 and the Chiefs are favored by 6.5, the predicted margin of 7 covers, so the spread pick is the Chiefs. At a margin of 6 it would be the other team. NFL.com grades its editors the same way. A predicted score that lands exactly on the spread gives no spread pick. A column that prints a predicted score but no spread (ProFootballTalk) is graded straight up only.

Records and percentages

• A record reads wins-losses-pushes (W-L-P).
• Win % is wins divided by wins plus losses. Pushes are left out, as is usual in the U.S.
• Next to each win % we show a 95% range (Wilson score interval). It shows how much a record could move by luck alone. For example, a record of 48-29-1 (62.3%) has a range of 51% to 72%.
• The season tables rank only experts with at least 30 decided picks. Everyone else is listed, unranked. Equal win % shares a rank.
• For reference: at standard -110 pricing, a bettor needs to win 52.4% of spread picks to break even.
• Some outlets print a price with each pick: CBS Sports a moneyline, Tallysight the price at the time of the pick, FOX Sports the price in the column. On those experts' pages we show what one unit on each pick would have returned at that price. It is a separate number from the win-loss record.

The market line

On upcoming games we show the market line: the point spread and total that sportsbooks were offering at the time shown, taken from a market price feed. It is there for reference, so you can compare an expert's pick with the price of the day. It is never used to grade a pick, and we don't link to any sportsbook.

How we check our count

• ESPN and CBS Sports mark each pick as a win or a loss on their pages. Our grade matches their mark on 1,916 of 1,937 picks. Every difference is a push: CBS shows a push as a loss in its grid but counts it as a push in its records, and we do the same.
• Tallysight marks each pick on the team sites that use it. Our grade matches its mark on 464 of 464 picks.
• ESPN's printed season records match ours for 11 of 11 experts.
• CBS Sports' printed weekly records match ours in 70 of 70 cases. In the one other case, CBS's weekly header disagrees with the win and loss marks on its own page, and our count matches the marks.
• NFL.com's printed records match ours in 16 of 20 straight-up and 14 of 20 spread cases. The differences left are one game each and are explained as far as we could on the NFL.com page.
• Other outlets don't print running records we can check yet. Their records come from the picks and the final scores alone.

What we don't do

• We don't make picks and we don't sell them.
• We don't link to sportsbooks and we don't take money from them.
• We don't call anyone good or bad. A record is a count of picks, not a verdict on a person.
• We are not affiliated with any of the outlets we track.

Corrections

If a number here is wrong, it gets fixed and the fix is listed on the corrections page. Records are rebuilt from the saved picks and the final scores every time, so a fix flows to every page. Our editorial standards say how we handle errors and requests.