09/09/96 THE OFFICIAL FOOTBALL POOL WEB SITE

THE OFFICIAL FOOTBALL POOL WEB SITE

WITH THE END OF SUMMER COMES THE RETURN OF PENS, paper, and filling out little boxes with numbers. Kids returning to school? Hardly. For many adults, the arrival of the fall season means one thing: the start of the office football pool. But instead of clandestinely creating and photocopying pool charts, signing up co-workers, and tabulating results--all on company time--football fans can now get some high-tech help and maybe even boost productivity by spending less time on this all-important activity.
ESPNet's SportsZone, a Web site developed by Starwave Corp. in Bellevue, Wash., for the ESPN sports cable-TV channel (http://espnet.sportszone.com), will offer the capacity to create and manage office football pools electronically. Because ESPN's database contains the entire season schedule of football games, ESPN computers can automatically create the necessary forms each week and determine pool winners as soon as game scores are in. Also, in addition to public pools that any Web visitor can join, SportsZone can establish private pools, accessible only to those with a password. That makes running an interoffice pool as easy as directing co-workers to the ESPN site--and avoiding that awkward moment of bumping into the boss at the copy machine.
EDITED BY PAUL M. ENG