Pick'em & Game of the Week - NeonSportz Docs

Pick’em winner voting

Pick’em lets signed-in members vote on a scheduled game’s winner.

Before voting:

The game must exist and still be eligible.
Pick’em must be unlocked.
The user must be signed in.

To vote:

Open the game or supported schedule view.
Choose the predicted winner.
Confirm the selected team.
Submit the vote.
Verify the interface reflects the choice.

Lock or unlock pick’em

Commissioners open Administration → Game Settings.

Is Pickem Locked = Yes: members cannot vote on the current week’s game winners.
Is Pickem Locked = No: eligible members can vote.

Lock voting at the deadline your league announces. The setting is league-wide for the current workflow.

Auto-post pick’em on advance

Under Administration → Discord, commissioners can enable Auto-post Pick’em on Advance to post the new week’s matchups to the configured Pick’em channel. Enable Only Auto-post Game of the Week to post only the selected GOTW instead. If that option is enabled and no GOTW is selected, NeonSportz does not create a Pick’em post.

Point spreads

Display Point Spread controls whether game point spreads are visible:

Yes: show the stored spread.
No: hide it from game presentation.

New current-week regular-season games can receive an Estimated draft only when both teams have at least two prior played games in the same league and season. Forced, simulated, conceded, and superseded games do not qualify. Expected home score averages the home team’s points for with the away team’s points allowed; expected away score does the reverse. A four-point margin becomes -3.5 / +3.5; fractional margins are rounded to tenths, small margins and ties to zero. This is a simple statistical suggestion, not an AI or market line. Other stages and insufficient history require manual entry.

An editor can optionally use Pick’em line and GOTW deadline to approve or enter the home line; the away line is its opposite. Winner predictions on web and Discord do not require spread approval, even when spread display is enabled or no estimate is available. Pick’em locks and GOTW deadlines still apply. Existing reviewed or voted-on games retain their stored lines. Untouched future games that an older release froze at 0–0 can receive an automatic estimate on the next schedule or standings import. Approving a line or submitting the first pick freezes it against import changes. After picks or a result, a change requires this correction control and a reason; its named before/after history is administrator-only. Ordinary schedule spread controls cannot silently correct a submitted line. Spreads remain display-only: winner predictions do not grade against the spread and do not settle wagers.

Pick’em Counts

Open Games → Pick’em Counts to review vote totals. Use This Season for the current season or All Time for the league’s full history. The season filter can show any specific season. Counts reflect stored votes, not Discord reactions outside the NeonSportz voting workflow.

Discord offers the same cumulative views through /games pickem-results by selecting This Season or All Time for scope. Leave scope blank to keep the existing per-game results picker for a selected week.

Correct predictions have separate GOTW and Regular counts plus the unchanged overall correct total. New predictions save the game’s GOTW designation on first submission; editing a pick or later changing the featured game does not reclassify it. Historical picks whose original designation is unknown appear as Legacy/unclassified, not as regular picks. Season/stage/week filters apply to all counts; superseded duplicate games are excluded.

Separate prediction channels and deadlines

In Administration → Discord, optional GOTW Pick’em Voting Channel and GOTW Pick’em Results Channel split featured games from regular games. The existing Pick’em destinations continue to receive regular games when Only Auto-post Game of the Week is off. When it is on, only selected GOTW games receive automatic voting posts and results, regardless of whether destinations are shared or separate. Regular games do not delay GOTW-only results. A blank GOTW destination uses the existing Pick’em destination. Identical results destinations receive one post for the eligible games; separate groups wait only for their own games to finish and are announced once. Invalid IDs are rejected; inaccessible or deleted Discord destinations fail safely without redirecting a post into another channel.

An editor sets an optional GOTW prediction deadline on the game using an ISO timestamp with an explicit timezone, such as 2026-10-09T20:00:00-04:00. The stored instant is UTC, displayed in your local timezone. At or after that instant, new predictions and edits are rejected on web and Discord. Clearing the deadline disables automatic locking; existing manual Pick’em locks still apply. Rescheduling a game does not move the deadline. These settings concern winner predictions for the selected GOTW, not next-week matchup-selection votes.

Game of the Week voting

Members can vote for supported weekly games as Game of the Week.

Commissioner settings:

Anonymous GOTW Votes = Yes: only users with league admin permission can see who voted for what.
Anonymous GOTW Votes = No: voter choices are visible.
Allow Multiple GOTW Votes = Yes: a member may vote for more than one game that week.
Allow Multiple GOTW Votes = No: a member is limited to one.

Select and review Game of the Week

Open Games → Games of the Week.
Choose the season, stage, and week.
Review eligible games and votes.
Use commissioner controls to create or change the selected game where supported.
Verify the league home and /gotw output.

Deleting a GOTW selection removes that featured record; it does not delete the underlying game.

Suggest a game

Create → Suggest a game ranks that week’s matchups and gives a one-line reason for each, from the two teams’ records, form, division and whether real people are on both sides. Choose the season, stage and week first — there is nothing to rank until the week is known.

Suggestions are a shortlist, not a decision. Picking one fills in the game field; nothing changes in your league until you save.

Rivalry games and reward credits

Commissioners may opt in to team-pair rivalries. A rivalry belongs to the two teams, not to their current users: each team can have up to the league’s configured limit (three by default). Choose whether each pair is manually tagged from its current or future unplayed games or automatically tagged when those two teams meet in an upcoming imported game. Use Game Settings to create pairs, remove or reactivate them, select manual game tags, and configure reward labels and credits. Removing a rivalry does not erase historical game labels.

A rivalry and Game of the Week are independent markers, so one game can have both. Optional rewards are an auditable NeonSportz credit ledger only. They do not change Madden attributes, player statistics, or currency. Each credit has a manual-fulfillment label: it is not paid into Madden. A credit is recorded only for a real completed, non-tied game; simulated, force-win, conceded, canceled, or superseded games receive no credit. If an imported correction later invalidates a result, its credit is revoked in the ledger. Corrected results can regrant an existing credit to the corrected winner using its original reward definition. The administrator-only ledger includes grant/revoke events and result snapshots. Historical imports never create new credits. Disabling rewards, removing a pair, or setting credits to zero stops new grants without erasing valid past credits.

How the Game of the Week is chosen when you do not pick one

In order:

A commissioner’s pick, if the week has one. Never overridden.
The game with the most member votes.
A suggested game, when the week advances with no pick and no votes at all. The reason is shown with the selection so the league can see why that matchup was chosen.

Step 3 replaces what used to happen in a week nobody voted in, which was that an arbitrary game became the Game of the Week with nothing behind it. If suggestions are unavailable, that older behaviour is still the fallback, so a week always has a Game of the Week.

Discord commands

/gotw shows the selected Madden Game of the Week.
Game and schedule commands can display weekly matchups.

See Madden Commands for exact options.

Common problems

Vote control missing: sign in and confirm game eligibility.
Voting disabled: commissioner must unlock pick’em or the voting window is closed.
Wrong weekly games: import League Info and Schedule, then choose the correct filters.
Votes visible unexpectedly: review Anonymous GOTW Votes.
User can vote more than once: review Allow Multiple GOTW Votes.