Thirty-three is a football number
The target works because of how football scores are built. Thirty-three is reachable but awkward — it is not a tidy stack of touchdowns, it needs a field goal in the mix — so teams land near it constantly and land on it rarely. That gap is the pool.
The result is that a meaningless fourth-quarter field goal, the kind nobody watches, becomes the best or worst thing that has happened to you all month.
Nothing to submit, ever
Every other format asks for a decision every week, and every week somebody forgets. This one asks for nothing after the draw: there is no card, no deadline and no way to fall behind through inattention. For a large office where half the room will not complete a pick sheet, it is the pool that still has everyone in it in December.
Weeks where nobody hits the number go to the closest team, and the pool tracks how far each team has been off across the season.