Tonight is the kickoff of the 2007 NFL season! (Yes, by "football", I mean the American version.) For those of us who are "into" football, this is an exciting time of year. Finally, we're done over-analyzing the draft, no more speculative training camp reports, the farce that is the pre-season has ended, and we can get down to business.

This time of year is always extra busy for me because I run MyFootballPool, a side project where I host other people's football pools and also run a few free ones of my own. For the uninitiated, a football pool is where everyone pays a small amount of money, and then you have some variation on correctly predicting the outcome of weekly games, and the winner gets the money. (Note that "fantasy football" is something else entirely.) Despite the fact that their legality is questionable in this (annoyingly Puritanical) country, football pools are becoming something of an American tradition, at least for those of us who follow the sport.

As for the pools I run, they're both free to join, and I offer $100 prizes to the winners. I've never made a dime off of MyFootballPool - it's a "for fun" project, and I offer the prizes as incentives to get people using the site, which is good from a testing perspective, since it's just me doing it and I might overlook something.

Originally my free pools were my friends only, but these days they're open to anyone who finds my website. If you'd like to play (and remember, these are free), here they are:

1. The Eliminator - a survivor pool where you have to pick one team each week of the season to win. If that team loses, you're out. Last person standing wins (it's never gone the full 17 weeks of the season). And you can't pick the same team twice.

2. Free Spread Pick 'Em - a pick 'em pool where, each week, you pick the winners of each game, against the spread. The person with the most right at the end of the regular season is the winner.

Click the links if you'd like to sign up. And of course... GO EAGLES!!!!