Super Bowl Squares Odds

We’ve all been in one of those Super Bowl Squares pools. You know, the kind – where you put a buck in the pot and are assigned a square on a 10×10 grid. Each square corresponds to a pair of numbers, one for the NFC team and one for the AFC team. The score at the end of each quarter — specifically the ones digit for each team’s score — determines which square wins 25% of the total cash pot. For instance, if the Colts lead the Saints 17-14 at halftime, the person with 7 on the Colts axis and 4 on the Saints axis wins the cash.

I’ve always wondered which squares were most likely to win. Logic tells you that a combination of 0s, 3s and 7s could be good, while 2s and 5s are not so good. So what squares are the best and which numbers should you hope to randomly draw? I looked at data for all NFL games played since the 2006-07 season to determine the answer to that question, and then I looked at results from past Super Bowls and scores from the 2009-10 Colts and Saints games to determine your best bets for Super Bowl XLIV in Miami.

The Basics (Using 2009-10 Data)

There were 256 regular season NFL games and ten postseason games so far this year for a total of 266 games…or more importantly, 1,064 quarters played and 1,064 combinations of winning scores. Even though there are 100 squares on the board, we’ll group like combinations (e.g. 3-7 and 7-3) to make our findings a little clearer.

As expected, the most frequent scores this year ended in 0 (597 times), 7 and 3 – over two-thirds of the possible scores.  The least frequent were 2 (26 times), 5, 9 and 8. And the most frequent combinations? 7-0 (146 times), 3-0, 0-0, 7-3 and 7-4.  Over 45% of the combinations were made of these five winners.  Three combinations did not happen a single time during the past NFL season­ 2-2, 5-5, 6-5.

(A note about the graphics in this article: I used a color-coding system to show the largest numbers in dark green and the smallest numbers in dark red.  The rest of the numbers fall somewhere in the green-yellow-red spectrum.)

More Details (Using Data From the Past Four Years)

The disbursement table for 2009-10 looks remarkably the same as the table that includes data from the past four years (consists of all 1,067 regular season and postseason games from 2006-07 through the 2010 playoffs).  The latter chart, though, obviously includes four times as many data points and may be a slightly better indicator of the true probability of each of the combinations.  Here is the hit percentage (since I know some of you would rather see % rather than the raw #) for each combination.

Breaking It Down Even More (Quarter-By-Quarter)

To this point, our data has simply shown the aggregate number of occurrences for each number across all quarters.  What the data hasn’t shown is some numbers are better to have in one quarter over another.  For instance, you might expect a 0-0 to happen much more frequently at the end of the first quarter (because of a scoreless first quarter) compared to the end of the game.

These numbers show the percentage of all quarter-winning scores over the past four years.  So, in a 7-7 quarter, 7 is actually counted twice.  Although the table above does not tell us what combinations are best for each quarter, logic indicates if you have two low-percentage numbers the odds are not in your favor to win the cash.

First Quarter: If you have an 8 in the first quarter, give up.  In the last four years (over 4,200 quarters of NFL football), there have been ZERO first quarter winners with an 8.  In fact, when looking at the first quarter, unless you have a 0, 3 or 7, it’s not looking good.  89.6% of first quarter scores have had scores ending in those three numbers, with 0 hitting 45.5% of the time.  (And don’t celebrate if you have 2 or 5; 2 has hit three times and 5 hit two times in the last four years.)

Last Three Quarters: 0-3-7 continue to be the most popular numbers in the last three quarters, but not by nearly the same dominant margin — 0-3-7 account for 68.6% of numbers in the second quarter, 59.4% in the third and 48.2% at game’s end.   So as the game progresses, other numbers are able to get some action.  For instance, 4 doubles its percentage from the first to second quarter (6.5% to 12.9%), and it even overtakes 3 in the fourth quarter.  And although the 2-5-8 combo are the runts of the litter in the first quarter (0.2% combined), in the fourth quarter they have accounted for 13.3% of hits in the last four years.

Final Quarter: In some pools, the end of game score pays more than the rest of the quarters.  In these pools, the most valuable combos are 7-0, 3-0, 7-4, 4-1 and 4-0.  These five account for over 31% of the final scores over the past four years.  2-2 and 9-9 NEVER hit in the past four years.

Super Bowl History

Data from 43 years of Super Bowls tells much of the same story as the past four NFL seasons.  The top six combos from 172 Super Bowl quarters are the same as our four-year data, and again, almost two-thirds of the scores end in 0, 3 or 7. On the flip side, 18 combinations of numbers have failed to appear in the Super Bowl, including the three that didn’t hit in all of 09-10. The number you certainly want to stay away from is 5 as it has partnered only with 0, 1, and 9 for winning combinations (not even 5-3 or 5-7 have happened in the Super Bowl!).

The most common Super Bowl final score combination?  7-4 hit in five of the 43 years.  Interestingly enough, the NFC had the 7 each time.  1, 2, 5, 8 and 9 have NEVER hit in the first quarter of the Super Bowl.

Colts vs. Saints

While we can’t do the same type of combination matrix for individual teams as we have in the rest of the analysis, we can look at the Colts and Saints most frequent scores this year.  Each team has played 18 games – or 72 quarters of football.

The Colts and the Saints also may be more prone to particular numbers compared to what our four-year data would suggest.  This table shows the difference between the historical average and the average for each team this year.

For instance, teams historically land on 0 27.3% of the time.  The Colts, however, hit 0 only 13.9% of the time (a difference of 13.4%) – or about half the amount they would have been expected to land on 0.  The Saints hit 0 19.4% of the time.  This low number of 0s is likely because each team had only five scoreless first quarters this year.  In fact, the Colts had 0 only 10 times this season – and three of them were against the Jets in the AFC Championship!

On the other hand, the Saints hit 8 in 12.5% of its quarters which is almost five times the league’s 2.8% average.  The Colts, too, also like 8 more than the rest of the league, hitting 8 9.7% of the time.  Why would these two teams land on 8 so often?  I think this could be for two different reasons: 1) the Saints were the league’s highest scoring team, thus making them more apt to score multiple touchdowns and get to 28, 38 and even 48 points (which they did twice in 2009; and 2) the Colts were the worst team in the league in terms of number of field goals made, which makes them less likely to sneak into some of the funky multiples-of-three numbers (and on top of that, they score lots of touchdowns!).

Prediction

So what does all this analysis tell us about this year’s big game? First of all it tells me I wasted multiple hours proving to myself that 0, 3, 4 and 7 are good, and if I get 2 or 5 I’m screwed.  But based on the last four years of data, Super Bowl history and this year’s competing teams, I’ll go with quarter scores of NO 10-7, IND 21-17, IND 28-24 and a final of IND 31-27.

But really, I’d be just as happy to see an early field goal and a couple of first quarter safeties, no further scoring, and four winning 5-2 quarters.  Good luck!

Andy Frushour is the commissioner of the Monkeyball World Championships (a popular tournament version of the classic ladder golf game).  Casey Frushour is a freelance graphic designer in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Want to run your own Super Bowl Squares pool? Try one of these resources:

• RunYourPool.com
• Super Bowl Squares