K-Z Office Pool

The K-Z NFL Office Pool got it's start in the great state of Oregon. In 1989, the pool's co-founder, me, got married and moved from Michigan to Oregon. Once in Oregon, I started working with an agency that provided Job Training Partnership Act services (JTPA at that time) for low income and dislocated workers. While Oregon was, and still is, a great place to live, it didn't have a professional football team. I was born and raised in Detroit and no matter how much suffering they perpetrated on the fans, I was, and still am, first and foremost, a Lions fan.

In 1990, I found out my boss, Pat, was an avid Raiders fan. Since Al Davis sent sweaters and Raider style warmups to the Detroit Pistons, the Raiders had a special place in my heart. It was then I asked Pat if she wanted to start a weekly football pool. I explained that we could use the spreads in the Friday edition of the local paper's sports section (no Thursday night games at that time and yes, actual newspapapers you could hold in your hands). We agreed no money would exchange hands and the winner at the end of the year would be treated to lunch by the loser. Pat won that first year.

The next year we had another co-worker, Nikki, who overheard Pat and me talking about the pool. She was an avid Steelers fan. It was then that Nikki became the third player in our little "for fun" pool. In 1997 my wife accepted a post-doc position at Case Western Reserve University so off to Cleveland we went. Instead of ending the pool, we took it online. We could no longer do lunches so we came up with a different honor, create a Hall of Fame and post the season winner in the Hall for all to see. The winner also got to select the NFL team theme for the next season's web site. This also became the time we had several players join. We've have grown from 2 players to over 20 players in 6 states!

This is now the our 34th year of the pool. However, this year won't be the same. The wonderful person I started this pool with passed away this past spring. I dedicate this year's pool to my pool partner Pat Z. We miss you Pat.