About the Gehlke Bros.

Who are you guys?

We are the Gehlke Brothers, Glenn and Sean. We are easy to tell apart: Glenn (at left in the above photo) is the defending Gehlke Bros. Football Picks champion and current custodian of the coveted Surfy Trophy, in addition to serving as the GBF webmaster and providing the occasionally witty comments that grace the @nawful feed on X (formerly Twitter). Sean (the fellow on the right) is the only one in the family with his own commemorative brick at Levi’s Stadium. Ben, the handsome devil in the middle, is Glenn’s 32-year-old son, affectionately known here at Gehlke Bros. Football as “King Chaos” for his formerly unconventional approach at picking the winners. But Ben has proved a formidable opponent of late, winning the overall championship against his elders in 2025.

Why are you doing this?

Sometime in the mid-‘80s — we can’t recall the exact year — we began a friendly competition to see who could predict the most winners of each week’s NFL games with the goal of having the most correct picks by the end of the season. The winning Bro received bragging rights until the next season’s competition. As the years have rolled along the competition has become more intense, with a perpetual trophy now going to the victor and weekly updates posted on the internet. Other than that the contest has always been for fun only.

How does it work?

We follow the NFL’s regular season games. Every week, the Bros make their predictions as to the winners. All picks are “straight-up,” meaning we count only wins and losses and not point spreads. Picks for Sunday and Monday games are typically posted on Sunday morning prior to the scheduled kickoff of the day’s first game. In the event of Thursday, Saturday or other stupid midweek games, the picks for those games are usually made and posted on game day.

The majority of picks are done via email or a live telephone call. As a courtesy, the player who is behind in any given week generally gets to announce his pick for each game after his opponent. Theoretically, this prevents the leader from changing his picks at the last minute in an effort to avoid a split that could help his opponent’s cause. We try to be fair, however, even when we don’t follow this practice (which seems to be often.) Our simple motto always has been: “Pick the winners.” The more you can manage that, the better your chances of winning the trophy.

At the end of Week 18 (whose idea was it to add that pesky extra week?) we add up the total correct predictions to determine the winner. Then the Bros shake hands, a trophy is presented and the winner consoles the loser or does his best “in your face” dance — occasionally both. If the contest is tied at the end of the regular season, the playoffs and Super Bowl (affectionately referred to around here as the “Stupor Bore”) are used as a tie-breaker. That has happened only three times in the history of the Gehlke Bros. competition — most recently in a wild finish to the 2025 season.

Explain the charts you use on the weekly updates and how they work.

Our weekly picks have gone through a few incarnations over the years, and 2026 brings another fairly substantial overhaul.

Under each of our handsome mugs you’ll find our season-to-date record, followed by our record for the current week. Our picks appear in the grid below. Once a game is complete, the winning team is highlighted in the schedule, while a correct pick gets a gold highlight in that Bro’s column. An S symbol marks the games in which Glenn and Sean have picked opposite teams — the traditional “split” games that can swing the race for the Surfy.

The standings panels keep track of two slightly different things. Overall Standings includes Glenn, Sean and Ben and ranks us by our season records. Surfy Trophy Standings tracks the head-to-head race between Glenn and Sean for possession of the coveted hardware.

The 2026 redesign also marks a technological changing of the guard for GBF. After years of hand-built pages, homemade graphics and assorted bits of code held together by dental floss and determination, the site has moved to WordPress, with AI assisting in the design and coding. We still make the picks, write the updates and settle the arguments ourselves. Technology just does considerably more of the grunt work now.

If you venture into the archives, however, you’ll encounter some artifacts from earlier GBF civilizations. Up until last season we used a multicolored picks grid in which predicted winners appeared in yellow, correct picks turned green, and the schedule winner was boldfaced. Earlier still, the weekly pages relied on animated GIFs and other symbols to identify our picks:

Glenn’s picks ; Sean’s picks ; Ben’s picks .

We also used a special symbol for games in which Glenn and Sean chose opposing teams . Those were — and still are — the pivotal games in the race for the Surfy.

Before 2015, the standings graphics could get even more colorful: Sean was represented by a nuclear blast , Glenn by smiley faces and Ben by stars. We could explain why, but some mysteries of early web design are probably best left to history.

What is this perpetual trophy I keep hearing about? What does it look like?

The perpetual trophy — universally known as “The Surfy” — joined the competition in 1993 and has been passed between Glenn and Sean ever since. The winner of each season earns custody of the trophy until the following year. In 2025, Glenn broke a six-year drought to regain possession of the statuette.

The Surfy gets its name from the vaguely surfboard-shaped platform beneath its little gold football player. It is not particularly large, expensive or impressive as athletic trophies go. None of that matters. After more than three decades of competition, it has acquired a significance wildly disproportionate to its monetary value.

Ben competes in the overall GBF standings but not for the Surfy itself, which remains the prize in the original Glenn-vs.-Sean rivalry. Thus it is entirely possible for Ben to finish with the best record in a season while one of the Bros still takes home the hardware.

What’s this “NawFuL” you keep referring to, and how come you write it so funny?

Ignoring its Shakespearean roots, we use “NawFuL” for anything and everything having to do with the National Football League. It can be a term of endearment or a pejorative, depending on your mood. For example, on a day when you’re bummed because your Stupor Bore team lost after a 25-point lead, you could say, “What a NawFuL game!” which sounds a lot like “The NFL is awful.” Or perhaps you are elated because you were rooting for the team that erased that 25-point deficit to win in an epic comeback and you exclaim, “That was just NawFuL!” meaning the “NFL is full of awe.” Either way, NawFuL is a truly excellent term that deserves a home among the legions of devoted football fans.

Hey, you guys are pretty cool and this thing sounds like a lot of fun. Can I get involved?

Sure. You can follow us on X (formerly Twitter). You can also take a gander at our weekly picks and attempt to parlay them into big bucks with your bookie. (We’re above such petty pastimes as sports betting, of course.) We have longstanding and as yet unfulfilled plans to eventually create an interactive feature that will allow visitors to the site to match wits with us for a chance to win pretty cool prizes. (OK, they’ll probably be lame prizes, but at least you’ll have a chance to win something.)

Why don’t you have a social media fan page? Come on, dudes, it’s the 21st century!

You’re right, and we’ve considered starting one. But we’re so busy keeping track of losing football teams and preparing our picks that we’d scarcely have time to update it. Heck, we barely have time to update the site you are now enjoying. But we’ve got X. That’s something, right?

Can you recommend a winning pick for this year’s Stupor Bore? I’m going to Vegas and would like to lay odds on a dark horse so I can cash in big time this February.

We’ll give you a dark bird instead: Arizona. The Cardinals went 3–14 last year, dumped their franchise quarterback and now enter 2026 with a new coach, a 3.5-game projected win total and the longest Stupor Bore odds in the league. In other words, exactly the kind of can’t-miss investment opportunity we look for. Rookie running back Jeremiyah Love and his injured ankle could be star material, and Jacoby Brissett has unquestionably been saving his best football for age 33. At +100,000, a $10 bet could win you $10,000 — almost enough for an nosebleed seat at SoFi Stadium this February. Not to mention they are just a few hundred miles from the Strip, which practically makes them a hometown fave. So forget the Rams and Bills. Anybody can bet on good teams. Fortune favors the delusional.

Why don’t you link to other football fan sites?

Because they all suck. OK, real answer: We tried that a few years ago, but it’s too much work keeping up with dead links. Besides, once you’re here why would you want to go anywhere else?

I’ve had enough of this Q&A stuff. How do I get out of here?

To quote the Eagles (the musical group, not the football team): “You can check out anytime you like, but you can’t ever leave!” (Well, you can hit the back button on your browser.)

Celebrating 29 seasons online with the spinning gif-ball!