It's for a football pool and I told the guy I'd research and play around to
see if it's possible.
The spreadsheet looks like this:
NAME 16 15
Bob Pitts New England
Joe Seattle Minnesota

It goes 16 through 1
Say Bob gets them all right except 15 (which he picked New England to win)
he gets 121 (possible out of 136 points).
Bob is in row 2 and takes up 16 columns. Right now I do the math by hand. Is
there a way to assign a cell a number value even though a team name is
entered in it?
The ideal situation is to check after the games and delete the wrong entries
and then use a SUM at the end. But for that to work a row needs a value I
take it.
I am quite lost on what to do here.
I am open to other ideas as well!

You will need a results row to compare to. You could use something like this
Name 16 15 ... 1 Total
RESULTS Pitts New Eng ... Dallas =136
Bob Pitts New Eng ... Dallas formula

enter the following formula (should be in R3 if I counted right)
=SUMPRODUCT(B$1:Q$1,--(B$2:Q$2=B3:Q3))
and copy down entire list of names.