Labor Day weekend used to mean one thing in my house: sharpened pencils, a printed schedule spread across the kitchen table, and my father explaining for the tenth time why you never pick an NFC East road game in September. Yahoo Sports just brought a little of that ritual into the modern age with its new Pro and College Football Challenge games, and I'll admit it, I'm already clearing space on the table.

The setup is simple, which is exactly the point. As Yahoo announced this week, the Pro Football Challenge gives you 10 picks a week, straight winners, no spreads to agonize over at 12:55 on a Sunday afternoon. The college version runs on the same bones, letting you navigate the Saturday slate, which if you've been paying attention to Week 1, is its own special kind of chaos.

Ten picks doesn't sound like much until you're staring at that one game you can't figure out. Every pick 'em player knows the feeling. You talk yourself out of the right answer, talk yourself back into it, then flip a coin and somehow land on the wrong side anyway. I once watched a guy in my old office pool take the Texans straight up in December because he "had a feeling." He finished last. Feelings, as my father used to say, are not a handicapping system.

What I like about this format is that it rewards the homework without demanding a finance degree. You don't need Dave Morgan's spreadsheet wizardry to compete, though it wouldn't hurt. You need to know which rookie quarterback is about to get baptized in an SEC road environment, which veteran team treats September like an extension of the preseason, and which coach, bless him, is coaching for his job and suddenly looks alive. That's the stuff I've been writing about for decades and it's the stuff that still wins pools in 2026.

The college side might actually be the sharper test. Pro football is a parity league; the lines between good and bad are thin enough that upsets feel like coin flips some weeks. College is different. There are four or five landmines on any given Saturday, and the whole season is about stepping on as few as possible. That Week 1 matchup between a ranked favorite and a Group of Five program with a veteran quarterback returning for year six? That's where pick 'em seasons are won. Somebody always takes the big favorite because the logo is prettier. Don't be that guy.

The timing couldn't be better either. The NFL preseason wrapped this week, I wrote about the Ravens' finale on Friday, and rosters are trimming down as we speak. College football's first full weekend is here. Fantasy drafts are happening in every league I'm in, and I've been telling readers for two weeks to do the homework before draft night. A pick 'em game is a natural companion piece to all of it. It keeps you honest about what you actually know versus what you think you know.

And that's what I love about these games. They're a season-long argument with yourself. Every week you get 10 chances to be right and 10 chances to learn something, and the standings sort out who was paying attention. My father kept his pick sheets in a shoebox going back to 1979. I don't have the shoebox, but I've got the same itch every September.

So sign up, make your 10 picks, and trust your first read. The coin flip rarely saves you. It never saved anybody in my father's kitchen, anyway.