HOW TO PLAY
Play the game10,000 Saturdays is a college football simulation game. You draft one program's all-time roster, six spins through its decades, then that roster plays the program's real schedule 10,000 times. It is free, there is no account, and your best record is kept in your own browser.
- Pick your program. Search or tap a program on the board. Every program that can field all five drafted slots from its own honors record is playable; the rest of this season's FBS can be requested.
- Spin the wheel. Each spin lands on one decade of that program, weighted by how many honored players the decade holds — or, sometimes, on a Legend.
- Draft a player. The decade offers its highest-rated names at each open slot plus two deep cuts. Pick one and the next spin starts on its own.
- Block a decade you do not want. You get ONE block per draft. The decade you block is off the wheel for the rest of that draft and comes back only when you play again. On a Legend the same button skips them instead, and that never spends the block.
- Fill all six slots. Quarterback, running back, receiver, tight end, one defender and a head coach. The sim starts the moment the sixth slot fills.
- Play 10,000 seasons. Your all-time lineup takes the program's place on its real current-season schedule, 10,000 times, in the same Monte Carlo engine the game pages use.
THE BOARD
A program is playable when it can fill all five drafted slots from its own honors record and has at least5 decades for the wheel to land on. Those programs are offered biggest honors pools first, up to40. The rule is measured, not a round number: past roughly the sixtieth program by pool size, some position has no honored player anywhere in the program's history, so that slot fills with a walk-on in every single draft, and a draft with a forced walk-on is not a draft. The rest of this season's FBS appears in the same list tagged "not on the board yet" — requesting is the same click as picking, one request per person per week.
THE POOL
Every player is on the public honors record, 1970 through last season, FBS programs only: the NCAA-recognized All-America teams (consensus and unanimous selections plus every first-team and lower-team pick by an official selector), Heisman Trophy winners, the College Football Hall of Fame, and NFL first-round picks. Behind them, as backfill, the yearly all-conference teams of the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, Pac-8, Pac-10, Pac-12, Big Eight and Southwest Conference fill the slots the All-America record leaves empty. Head coaches come from College Football Data season records. A player is eligible for a team-decade if they were honored at that school in that decade; they are rated on their best honored season there.
A decade joins the wheel once it holds enough honored players to be worth landing on — with one exception: a Heisman winner or a unanimous All-American opens their decade on their own, so a program's one great name is never stranded behind a volume rule.
THE RATING
Honors points per player-season, published and mechanical: unanimous All-American 4, consensus All-American 3, first-team pick by any official selector 1.5, any other All-America mention 0.5; Heisman winner adds 5 that season; an NFL first-round pick adds 1, a top-five pick 2; the Hall of Fame adds 2 to the player's best season. A season with no All-America mention scores 0.25 for first-team all-conference and 0.1 for second team (reading 60 and 59 on the roster), and the wheel's weighting counts All-Americans only, so the backfill fills holes without changing how often a program comes up.
A unit's score is 0.8 plus 0.45 per point, capped at 4.5; the number you see on your roster after the sim is 50 plus 11 times that score, so an All-America mention reads 61, a consensus pick 74, a unanimous one 79, a Heisman season 99. During the draft you see the honors, not the number. Coaches are scored on win percentage against every FBS coach that season. Slots: quarterback, running back, receiver, tight end, and one defensive player from any position. Offensive linemen and specialists have no slot.
THE TEAM
Offense is the weighted sum of the four position scores (QB 0.45, RB 0.2, WR 0.2, TE0.15), normalized back to unit variance; the composite is 0.6 offense + 0.4 defense. That maps onto the CVM scale as 9 + 3.5 × composite, plus or minus up to 2points for the coach. The ceiling is 38.5, the strongest team-season ever rated (2013 Florida State); a maxed lineup can equal it, never exceed it. The mapping was calibrated so the best possible lineup runs the table about a quarter of the time against a top-10 slate, a typical draft about two percent, and the worst possible lineup almost never.
THE SIM
Your team takes the schedule team's place, game by game, in the same Monte Carlo engine the game pages use: expected margin is your rating minus the opponent's current CVM rating, with home field applied, and each game is drawn 10,000 times. Results reflect current ratings, which update through the season, so the same lineup will project differently in November than in September. No point spreads and no odds are involved.
THE RECORD
The headline record is the most common outcome across the 10,000 seasons, whole numbers only; the gold bar in the histogram is that same outcome. The average appears as "averages 8.4 wins" and never as a W-L. The season played out on screen is one of the 10,000, drawn from the same engine, scores included. If it reaches 10regular-season wins it plays a playoff path against the highest-rated other teams (an unbeaten team gets a first-round bye); that path is illustrative and is not part of the record. The grade reads off the record: S for unbeaten, A for one loss, B for two, C for three or four, D beyond. The strength rating is your team's number on the CVM scale; the strongest and weakest slots are the highest and lowest rated units you drafted. Win a national title and the page says so properly.
One Share button carries the lot: the phone's own share sheet with the card attached, a ready-written post for X, Threads, Bluesky or Facebook, the text on your clipboard, or the image saved to your machine. The card is your six names, the record the season actually finished with and the program's colors. Every post opens a composer you still have to send, and nothing about your draft leaves your browser except what you choose to share.
THE DRAFT
Each spin lands on one of your program's decades, weighted by how many honored players that decade has, and offers the highest-rated names at each open slot plus two deep cuts drawn from the rest of that decade's honorees, so the same decade never shows the same list twice. Pick one and the next spin starts on its own; you can change program or start over before it does. You get one block per draft: the decade you block is off the wheel for the rest of that draft and returns only when you play again, and it stays named under the buttons so you can see what you turned down. Skipping a Legend uses the same button and does not spend it. Block the only decade a program has and the wheel says so and opens back up, because the draft still has to finish. A slot no decade of your program can fill is named up front and taken by a walk-on. The sim runs the moment the sixth slot fills.
LEGENDS
Every program on the board has a Legends board of 6: one head coach, one quarterback, one back, one receiver, one tight end and one defender. Where ESPN's 150 greatest college football players names someone at a slot, that is who holds it (offensive linemen have no slot; a transfer is filed under the school where the career ended). The list reaches players only, so the rest are the program's own: its Heisman winners first, then its College Football Hall of Fame inductees, then its unanimous and consensus All-Americans, then its best honored season at the slot. Head coaches are ranked by the whole tenure, not one season. That is 275 Legends across 59 programs.
A program's Legends are held out of its decades, so a man is either a Legend or a decade pick, never both. On the wheel LEGENDS is a segment the size of an average decade, so six decades and the Legends make a 1-in-7 landing, and it ticks past while the wheel spins so you can see what is on it. Landing on LEGENDS is like landing on a decade: it offers every Legend whose slot is still open and you pick one. A draft can land on LEGENDS at most 3 times, and a Legend you have already drafted never comes back. A name from ESPN's 150 fills the slot at a fixed rating of 94. A program Legend is rated on their own honors instead, so landing one is a good spin rather than a guaranteed jackpot. Each Legend's school, position and years were checked against Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).
COMMON QUESTIONS
- What is 10,000 Saturdays?
- A free college football simulation game: you draft one program's all-time roster across its decades, then the roster plays that program's real current-season schedule 10,000 times and reports the record it most often finishes with.
- Where do the players come from?
- The public honors record from 1970 through last season for FBS programs: NCAA-recognized All-America teams, Heisman winners, the College Football Hall of Fame, NFL first-round picks, with the era's all-conference teams as backfill. Nothing is invented and nobody is rated by hand.
- Is it free, and do I need an account?
- It is free and there is no account. Your best record is kept in your own browser and nowhere else.
- Can I play my team?
- Every program that can fill all five drafted slots from its own honors record, with at least 5 decades to spin through, is on the board, biggest honors pools first, up to 40. If yours is not there yet, it is one click to request it from the same list.
- How is a team rated?
- Each drafted player scores on published honors, the four offensive slots are weighted into an offense number, and offense and defense combine into one rating on the same scale the site's model uses for real teams. No point spreads and no betting odds are involved.