My office football pool

Someone in my office organized a football pool that I really like. Each week of the football season you pick a team. You score the number of points your team scores. You can't select that team again. This is the sort of run of the mill office pool, but what I like about ours is that it pays for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 10th, 20th, 30th, and last. So even if you are never going to come in first, there is still something to shoot for. Can you be just mediocre enough to slide into 20th place? If you are in 20th place, how many points to you need to stay in 20th place? Yes, you can treat the whole thing as a crap shoot, but there are a lot of different ways to play it if everyone is trying to win a prize.

This year I've been actively shooting for last place (again). Unfortunately 2-3 other guys have also been shooting for last place. I find myself 10 points out of last with two weeks to go and have no shot of shooting up to 30th place. So this week I find myself rooting for Denver. Oh, the humanity...