A pool is at its best in the days between results, and that is exactly when most of them go quiet. The Column puts a newsletter inside the pool itself: recaps, previews, standings arguments and week-ahead notes, each carrying a named contributor’s byline and picture, and readers can filter by writer. It is free on every plan, because writing to your own players is not a premium act.
What is optional — and what most organizers actually want — is not having to write it. Give a contributor a writing voice and it drafts the post itself from your pool’s real state: the standings as they stand, who picked what, who is still alive, what was decided and when. You read it, change what you want, and publish. It never posts on its own.
A pool that keeps talking
The pool keeps talking
A pool dies in the group chat long before the season ends. A weekly write-up with somebody’s name on it gives people a reason to come back to the pool page rather than just checking whether they won.
Somebody else does the writing
Every commissioner means to send a recap and most send two all season. A contributor with a writing voice drafts it from what actually happened — you read it, change what you like, and publish.
It can only use real results
The writer is handed your pool’s actual standings, picks and results and is not allowed to introduce a person, a score or an outcome that isn’t in them. It is a column about your pool, not a piece of generic sports filler.
Four steps to your first issue
Install The Column
Setup → Apps → The Column. It is free on every plan and works on every contest type. Name it whatever you like — “EFP Updates”, “The Tuesday Wire” — and that name is what players see in their menu.
Add a contributor
A contributor is a byline: a name and a picture. Add one for yourself, or one per topic, or one per co-commissioner. Readers can filter the Column by contributor.
Give them a voice (optional)
Pick a writing voice for a contributor and they can draft their own posts. The Commish is free on every plan; the three parody analysts come with Pro Commissioner, Organization, or a Contest Pass for one pool.
Brief it, then publish
Say what the piece is about — “week 4 recap, two people are now tied” — and it reads the real pool data and writes it. You edit and publish. Nothing posts itself, and the Column stays hidden from players until your first post goes live.
Four writers. One of them is free.
These are the default names. Any pool can rename any of them, so the byline your players see is whatever you decide.
The house voice: straight, warm, occasionally funny, and more interested in what happened than in arguing about it. Use it for recaps, reminders and the “here is where we stand” post. This is the one most pools want.
The draft-room analyst. Grades process over outcome, talks about value and reaches, and will tell somebody their pick was right for the wrong reason. Best where people made choices they can be judged on.
Unrestrained enthusiasm. Celebrates the bold call, gets carried away, and treats an ordinary Tuesday like it is prime time. Good for a pool that wants energy rather than analysis.
The prosecutor. Asks a player to justify a decision and does not let it go. Sharp, and worth pointing at a format where people’s choices are public.
Why it cannot make things up
A column about your pool is only worth reading if every fact in it is true, and the fastest way to lose a pool’s trust is one confident sentence about a game that never happened. So the writer is handed your pool’s real state and told plainly that it is the only source of fact it may use — it may not introduce a person, a pick, a round or a result that isn’t in front of it.
It is also not asked to do arithmetic. Counts, splits, ties and “who is alone on this pick” are worked out before the writer ever sees them and handed over as finished numbers, because a column that re-derives them is a column that eventually gets one wrong in front of everybody who can check it in ten seconds.
And it drafts. Every piece lands in front of you first, so the last edit is always a person’s.
The Column, answered
Works on whatever you’re running
The Column is a pool-wide app, not a contest type, so it sits on top of any of them — an NFL Pick’Em, an NFL survivor pool, a season-long squares pool, a keeper draft league or a celebrity death pool.
Start your pool’s newsletter free
The Column is free on every plan, and The Commish will write the first one for you.
Start free →