Image is illustrative and may not represent any specific product or template
So somebody just volunteered you to bring the squares board to the watch party. Or your office chat is doing one this year and you raised your hand. Or you actually want to know how football squares work without sitting through a YouTube ad first. Whatever brought you here, this is how to make a football squares board, start to finish, the version I wish I had when I ran my first one.
I run PickMySquare, a digital football squares board I built and still run myself. So yeah, I have a horse in this race, and you should read the rest of this knowing that. But this post is the manual version. The pen-and-paper, no-app, you-and-a-grid version. If you run one squares pool a year for a small group, you do not need software for it. You need ten minutes and a clean grid.
One more thing before the steps. I am a big guy, and this is a blog for big guys, so there is a section down at the bottom about the room the board lives in. Which chairs survive four quarters. Where to hang the grid so nobody has to bend over a coffee table with a plate in one hand. How to keep twelve people from stacking up in the same three feet of kitchen. Every other guide out there treats a squares board like it floats in space. It sits on your dining table, surrounded by your friends, and some of us take up more room than others.
Here is how to make a football squares board the right way.
What a Football Squares Board Actually Is
A football squares board is a 10 by 10 grid. One hundred squares. Each row gets a number 0 through 9, each column gets a number 0 through 9, and the two football teams sit on the two axes. People buy squares before kickoff. After every square is sold, you randomly assign the row and column numbers. At the end of each quarter, you take the last digit of each team’s score, find that intersection on the grid, and the person who owns that square wins money.
That is the whole game. The reason it works for casual fans is that you do not need to know anything about football to win. You just need a square.
Step 1: Pick Your Grid Size
Most squares pools are 100 squares because that is the cleanest version. Each square represents exactly one number combination, and there is one winner per quarter.
You have other options:
- 100 squares. Standard. Best for groups of 10 or more.
- 50 squares. Each square covers two number combinations. Half the entries, half the cost, more luck involved. This is what you run when you cannot find 100 buyers, which is most office pools in October. If you searched for how to make a 50 square football pool and landed here, the answer is that the setup is identical to the 100-square version. You just assign every square two number pairs at random instead of one.
- 25 squares. Tiny. Each square covers four number combinations. Fine for a four-person family pool.
For your first board, do 100. The math is cleaner and it is easier to explain to people.
Step 2: Draw the Grid
You have four real options:
- Paper or whiteboard. Draw a 10 by 10 grid. Label one team across the top, one team down the left side. Leave the row and column numbers blank for now. Draw it bigger than you think you need to. A grid with half-inch boxes means everybody has to lean into the same twelve inches of table to write a name, and if two of the people leaning are my size, that is a scrum, not a party. Poster board beats printer paper here.
- Excel or Google Sheets. Same thing, just digital. Easier to update, easier to share a screenshot.
- A free printable template. I keep a set of free printable boards over at PickMySquare, which is my own site, so you can print one instead of drawing 100 boxes with a Sharpie. If you would rather build your own, the block below is a plain HTML grid. Save it as a .html file, open it in a browser, print it.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Football Squares</title>
<style>
body { font-family: Arial, sans-serif; padding: 20px; }
h1 { text-align: center; }
table { border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0 auto; }
td { border: 1px solid #333; width: 60px; height: 60px; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle; }
th { border: 1px solid #333; padding: 10px; background: #f0f0f0; }
.corner { background: #fff; }
.axis { background: #e8e8e8; font-weight: bold; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Football Squares</h1>
<p style="text-align:center">Home Team: ___________ Away Team: ___________</p>
<table>
<tr><th class="corner"></th><th colspan="10">Away Team</th></tr>
<tr><th class="corner"></th>
<th class="axis"> </th><th class="axis"> </th><th class="axis"> </th><th class="axis"> </th><th class="axis"> </th>
<th class="axis"> </th><th class="axis"> </th><th class="axis"> </th><th class="axis"> </th><th class="axis"> </th>
</tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><th class="axis"> </th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>- An online generator. I will get to this in the last section. The point of this post is to show you the manual way.
Step 3: Set the Buy-In and Payout Split
This is where most first-timers freeze. The standard payout split is 20/20/20/40: twenty percent of the pot goes to the winner of each of the first three quarters, and forty percent goes to the final score winner.
Here is what that looks like at common buy-ins for a full 100-square board:
| Buy-in | Total pot | Q1 / Q2 / Q3 | Final |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1 | $100 | $20 each | $40 |
| $5 | $500 | $100 each | $200 |
| $10 | $1,000 | $200 each | $400 |
| $20 | $2,000 | $400 each | $800 |
Pick something everyone in your group is comfortable with. For most casual pools, $5 or $10 is the sweet spot. Anything higher and you start losing casual players.
Step 4: Sell the Squares
Now you go around and let people pick squares. They put their name in the square, not a number. Numbers come later. You can let one person buy multiple squares if you want to fill the board, but a lot of pools cap it at two or three per person to keep things social.
Pass the board around instead of making everyone come to it. Sounds obvious. It is not what happens. What happens is the board ends up on the kitchen island, the kitchen island is also where the wings are, and now you have a permanent traffic jam of people trying to write their name one-handed while holding a plate. Hand it to somebody. Let it travel the room.
Money collection is its own concern and most posts skip it. Here is what works:
- Venmo or Cash App. Set a deadline of kickoff minus two hours. Anyone who has not paid by then loses their square and you redistribute. This sounds harsh until you have chased somebody for $5 in March.
- Cash at the watch party. Fine for in-person groups. Bring small bills.
- No IOUs. Seriously. Pay-on-payout is how squares pools turn into resentment.
Track every payment. A simple Google Sheet with name, square number, and “paid yes/no” is enough.
Step 5: Randomize the Numbers (and Why You Wait)
This is the most important step and the one most beginner posts gloss over.
After every square is sold and paid, then you assign the row numbers 0 through 9 and the column numbers 0 through 9, both in random order. Not before. Why this matters: certain number combinations come up way more often than others.
Here is the rough hit-rate ranking based on historical NFL scoring (analyses of thousands of final and quarter scores all land in the same neighborhood):
- Hot numbers: 0, 7, 3, 4
- Lukewarm: 1, 6
- Cold: 2, 5, 8, 9
The reason is built into how football scores: a touchdown plus an extra point is 7, a field goal is 3, and most games sit at 0 to 0 for at least part of the first quarter. Two scores of 7 land you on 4 (14, 24, 34), and so on.
A square with a 0 and a 7 is statistically a much better square than one with a 2 and a 5. If people knew the numbers before they picked, the hot squares would get fought over and the cold squares would sit empty. By forcing everyone to commit to a square first and assigning numbers after, the pool stays fair. Everyone has the same expected value going in.
How to actually randomize:
- Write the digits 0 through 9 on ten scraps of paper. Pull them out of a hat one at a time and write each one across the top, left to right.
- Repeat for the rows.
- Or use a random number generator.
random.orgworks fine. Excel:=RANDBETWEEN(0,9)(just regenerate until you get all ten unique). - Once numbers are set, take a photo and send it to the group chat so nobody can claim the grid changed.
Step 6: Track the Winners
When each quarter ends, look at the score. Take the last digit of the home team’s score and the last digit of the away team’s score. Find that intersection on the grid. That square wins.
Example: end of Q1, score is Home 10, Away 7. Last digits are 0 and 7. The square at row 0 (Home) and column 7 (Away) wins.
If the score ends on an unusual number like a missed extra point or a safety, you still just take the last digit. A score of 17 to 13 means digits 7 and 3.
Example of a finished football squares board. Image is illustrative.
Step 7: Pay Out
Pay quarter winners as the quarters end if you can. Final winner gets paid after the game.
Tie or overtime questions:
- Halftime score is the Q2 winner. Always. It does not change at the end of regulation.
- Overtime counts toward the final score winner. If the game ends 31 to 28 in OT, the final digits are 1 and 8. That is the winner.
- A tied final after OT is rare. If it happens, the final score at the end of regulation is the final winner. Set this rule before kickoff so nobody argues later.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
These are the ones that turn a football squares board into an argument.
- Assigning numbers before squares are sold. Kills the fairness instantly.
- No payment deadline. You will be chasing somebody for $5 in February.
- Unclear OT rules. Set them before kickoff, in writing, in the group chat.
- Forgetting the halftime payout. People watch closer when there is money on the line every quarter.
- Letting one person buy 30 squares. Fine if everyone agrees, but it kills the social part.
- No record of who paid. Take a photo of the cash, the Venmo confirmations, anything. Your memory is not a payment ledger, especially by the third quarter.
Hosting a Football Squares Party as a Big Guy
Everything above is how to make a football squares board. This part is about where you put it, and about the room full of people who have to reach it. I am convinced that most watch parties fail on furniture, not on football. The game is on TV either way.
What does being a big guy have to do with a squares board?
Fair question. The answer is that a football squares board is a physical object sitting in a room full of humans. If you are a bigger guy, you already run this calculation the second you walk into somebody’s living room. Where do I sit. Is that chair going to hold. Can I get past that ottoman without doing the crab walk. Hosting means running that calculation on behalf of everybody else, and the board makes it harder, because now there is one specific spot in your house that all twelve people need to physically get to.
Count your chairs before you count your squares
If you are selling 100 squares to twelve people, you need twelve seats you would sit in yourself. Not twelve seats. Twelve seats you trust.
I have had chairs give out under me. The creak, the pop, the slow hydraulic sink toward the floor while you pretend nothing is happening and keep talking. It is a bad way to become the story of the night, and it is a much worse way for a guest to become the story of the night.
Steel folding chairs generally run 300 to 800 pounds of rated capacity. Plastic ones run 200 to 350. That spread is wide enough that “eh, it’s a chair” is not a plan. Flip one over and look for the sticker before you set it out. Then put the solid ones nearest the TV and nearest the food, because that is where people end up sitting whether you planned it or not.
Put the board where people can stand, not where they have to bend
Tape the grid to a wall at chest height. That is the whole tip. It sounds too simple to be worth a subhead and it fixes about four problems at once.
Chest height on a wall means everyone can read the grid from across the room, nobody bends over a coffee table twelve times a game, nothing gets spilled on it, and there is no cluster of people hovering over one end of the dining table. A coffee table is the worst available option. You are asking a room of adults to squat repeatedly while holding a plate. I should also say that a wall board photographs better for the group chat, which matters more than you would guess the first time somebody wants to relitigate the third quarter.
Keep the food table and the board table apart
Leave a few feet between the wings and the grid. Two destinations, two lines, and nobody is stuck behind the guy still deciding between square 44 and square 71 while his plate goes cold.
For what it’s worth, this is the same crowding problem a phone-based board solves for free. That is not why I built PickMySquare, but it turned out to be one of the better side effects. When the grid lives on everybody’s phone, there is no single square foot of your house that twelve people have to reach.
When You Outgrow the Paper Board
If you are running one pool a year for ten people, paper is fine. The friction starts when you are running multiple pools, your group is spread across cities, or you are trying to track payouts across a whole season.
That is the problem PickMySquare solves. Disclosure one more time, because it belongs at the top and the bottom of a post like this: PickMySquare is my project. I built it and I run it.
You create a board, send out a link, people pick their squares from their phones, and the numbers randomize automatically once the board fills. Quarter payouts calculate themselves. No app to download and no logins for your players. I built it because I got tired of being the guy in the group chat chasing Venmo payments and updating the grid by hand. It is free.
If you came here for the long version with my original take on doing this on a napkin, I already wrote that one. It is more humor than how-to. This post is the how-to.
Sources
- PickMySquare – Printable Football Squares (free printable boards, my own site)
- PromoLeaf – Weight Limit Considerations for Folding Chairs, By Type (folding chair capacity ranges by material)
- BetIQ – Best Numbers for Super Bowl Squares (frequency data for hot/cold numbers)
- Wikipedia – Betting pool (rules reference)
Your Turn
Building your first football squares board this year? Drop a comment with your buy-in and group size. If you have a folding chair horror story from somebody’s watch party, I want that in the comments even more, because that is roughly half of what this blog is. And if this guide saved you from a Sharpie-and-napkin disaster, send it to the friend who keeps volunteering you to “bring the board.”
The real pro tip from this whole article is the wall. Tape the grid up at chest height and about four of the problems above never happen to you.
And if you want the auto-pilot version, PickMySquare is mine, it is free, and it takes about thirty seconds to set up. Otherwise, grab a pen and go draw a 10 by 10. You’ve got this.
