June Madness?! Turning June Soccer into a Delightful Summer March Madness Pool

Feed your sports and gambling addictions by transforming Euros and Copa America into a Soccer Survivor contest

Not everyone has a Wet Hot American Summer. Summer can be a dry spell for sports fans, especially with a blowout NBA Finals and a drab Stanley Cup match-up sprinkled amidst the dog days of baseball.

But soccer is here to save us, and it’s already begun. You’ve already ramped up your patriotism to root for the USMNT and noticed the matches flooding your TV each night. It’s about to expand to European day games too starting Friday. Even better. And they’re all on ESPN and Fox Sports networks.

Now I certainly cannot condone you watching soccer all of your working days or your gambling in a pool. But… I can’t really stop you either, so I may as well get you set up properly.

You know how much you love filling out brackets every March and going ballistic over teams you never followed all year?

Enter Soccer Survivor.

Now, this isn’t just a bracket pool, and there’s no ESPN link you can just click and join. You’ll need to run the pool yourself.

You’re actually not filling out a bracket at all, because the brackets don’t exist yet. Teams are in groups where they’ll play each other once — after that, the standings will determine the brackets.

Besides, filling out brackets secretly sucks anyway. It’s a lot of fun for 20 minutes, then everything starts and it’s totally out of your hands. How many times have you wished you could pick a sleeper further or unpick your Final Four team?

Again: Soccer Survivor.

Let’s rewind… soccer? What soccer? Is this MLS?

NO. This is so much better than MLS.

There are two major international soccer tournaments happening right now. Border rivalries and cups at stake.

Copa America has already begun and features North and South American teams, and Euros start Friday and pit the 24 best European teams. See, this is easy, it’s right there in the name.

Here are two primers to get you started:

Copa America Centenario: 12 Minute Preview

Everything You Ever Needed to Know about the 2016 Euros But Were Too Afraid to Ask

No need to read all at once. There’s an explanation of each tournament and something about each team. Bookmark them for reference.

Ok, so Soccer Survivor. Are you explaining this or what?

The premise: Contest starts this Saturday, June 11th. Get a group of your friends — 5 or 50, doesn’t matter. You pick one team each day and can’t pick them again. As long as they don’t lose, you survive. Last one standing wins.

It’s easy. It’s strategic. It’s fun.

And it fills that summer sports and competition niche you’re dying to fill.

Soccer Survivor Rules

1. Maybe you want to play for bragging rights. If not, maybe you charge 5… bananas per entry. If you want to allow multiple entries, great.
2. Each day beginning Saturday, pick one team either from Copa or Euros using the above schedule. You have 3–5 games each day to pick from.
3. Remember, there are day games, beginning as early as 9am ET. So make picks due at kickoff of the team you’re choosing.
4. If your team wins or draws (group games can end in a draw) you survive. If they lose (including losing in penalty kicks), you’re out.
5. You cannot use a team you picked again at any point in the contest.
6. If your team loses, you can rebuy into the contest for 5 more bananas. You must rebuy that day or the next day. You can rebuy as many times as you want until you run out of… bananas.
7. To rebuy you need to make the same number of picks as the day of the contest. So if you’re rebuying Day 3, you need 3 new picks — and yes if even one of them loses, you’re back out. And you still can’t reuse teams. Rebuying is hard, but it’s so glorious when you get it right.
8. If you make it far enough, you’ll want to combine some of the dates into one Match Day so that there are enough games to pick from. June 19–20 and 27–30 and July 1–3 and 6–7 should each be one Match Day. That’s 17 total Match Days.
9. You must win with a correct pick on a new Match Day.
10. You can decide how to split up the bananas. Maybe the winner gets 75%, and 25% to the runner-up. Maybe you make it winner-take-all. That’s a lot of… banana bread.

That’s it! Those are the rules. Of course you can adapt them as you see fit, but those are the basics. If you have a fun twist or rule idea, add it to the comments below.

Pick one team a day.
Watch their game.
Make sure they don’t lose.
Survive another day.
WIN ALL THE BANANAS!!!

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