As usual, this NFL season has gone by way too fast. There are only two teams left, who will play in the year's final game: Super Bowl XVLII in New Orleans (get tickets).
At some point soon, if not already, you will know someone that has set up an office pool (Super Bowl squares).
Of course, you won't have any idea what your numbers will be when you select your square(s). You won't find out until after all 100 squares have been filled.
For those unfamiliar with how the process works, the numbers are based on the final score for each team at the end of each quarter or the game. So, in other words, a score of 3, 13, 23, etc. would count as a 3 for the pool.
When you find out your numbers, you will immediately have a sense of whether your numbers are good or bad. For example, you know that 7 and 3 is good. You know that 5 and 2 is not.
Before Super Bowl XLV, those were the exact numbers that I got (5 and 2).
Ugh!
Although I knew my odds were slim, I wasn't sure exactly how slim. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to run through all of the past Super Bowl boxscores to see which numbers have come up the most and least often.
With 46 Super Bowls in the books and four quarters per game, that means there have been 184 quarters and a total of 368 scores (184 quarters times two teams).
The most common number overall is 0 and especially so in the first quarter. Although its occurrence declines each quarter from the first to fourth, the number 0 has come up 101 times out of 368 possible outcomes (or 27.4 percent). In the first quarter, it has come up nearly half the time (43 of 92) but only 13.04 percent of the time in the fourth quarter (12 of 92).
The least common number overall is a two-way tie between 2 and 8, both of which have occurred nine times out of 368 (or 2.446 percent of the time). Of those two, the least common in the fourth quarter (final score) is the number 8, which has occurred three times (out of 92) as a final score.
Here are the most common by quarter (number of occurrences out of 92 in parenthesis):
- 1st quarter: 0 (43 times)
- 2nd quarter (halftime): 0 (28)
- 3rd quarter: 7 (22)
- 4th quarter (final): 7 (19)
Here are the least common by quarter (number of occurrences out of 92 in parenthesis):
- 1st quarter: 1, 2, 5 and 9 (tied with 0 times)
- 2nd quarter (halftime): 5 (1)
- 3rd quarter: 2 and 8 (tied with 3)
- 4th quarter (score): 8 (3)
Here's hoping you get only 7's and 0's.
Updated: Monday, January 21st, 2013.
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