3 Super Bowl Fun Facts
Want to amaze your friends at that Super Bowl party you’re going to? All you have to do is hit ’em with some Super Bowl math fun facts. Keep on reading to learn what they are!
Although most of us don’t spend much time thinking about math during the Super Bowl, the truth is that the big game is full of it. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since, as we’ve discovered over and over again, math is always all around us…if we take the time to see it.
While there are no doubt dozens of good mathematical questions that might come to mind while watching the Super Bowl, today we’re going to talk about 3 of them:
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Why is the phrase “Super Bowl” always accompanied by a Roman numeral?
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Does the coin toss that takes place before the Super Bowl actually matter?
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Are there any impossible Super Bowl scores?
So go ahead and put on your favorite team’s jersey, start limbering up, and stay tuned to arm yourself with a few festive math fun facts that you can throw around at the Super Bowl party you’re heading to this weekend!
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Super Bowls and Roman Numerals
On Sunday, February 2, 2014, the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks will be playing each other in Super Bowl XLVIII—aka, Super Bowl 48. Yes, in case you didn’t know it, the Roman numerals that you always see after the phrase “Super Bowl” are there to indicate that this is the 48th such big game to take place in the history of the National Football League (the first was in 1967).
Why the Roman numerals? Well, for one thing, the NFL season spans two calendar years (the current season started in 2013 and is ending in 2014), and a while back when all of this was being sorted out people (or marketers) didn’t think that “Super Bowl 2013-2014” sounded too snazzy. So, they instead decided to append Roman numerals and embrace the sprinkle of fancy they brought with them.
Couldn’t they have used modern numerals like 48 for the Super Bowl?
But still, why Roman numerals? Couldn’t they have used modern numerals like 48 for the Super Bowl? Well, besides the bit of fanciness I mentioned earlier, yes, they could have. And apparently they may soon be doing exactly that—or at least they may be ditching the Roman numerals.
Why? Well, in two years the NFL will be celebrating its 50th season, a season which will culminate with the playing of Super Bowl…wait for it…L. Yes, that’s right, the Roman numeral for 50 is “L,” and some people are a bit concerned about how that lonely “L” is going to look on T-shirts and whatnot—as well as its connection to the word “loser”—so a change could well be in store. We’ll know soon enough!
Now, on to the coin toss.
Does the Coin Toss Matter in Football?
Our second question for today has to do with a part of the game that takes place before the game even kicks off: the coin toss.
Namely, does it matter if a team wins or loses the coin toss? Does it increase the odds that a particular team will win if they win the toss?
So as not to keep you in too much suspense, I’ll let you know right off the bat that the answer is that winning or losing the coin toss has no statistically significant impact on the outcome of the game (so there’s no need to hold off on placing your bets until after the toss). How do I know this? Thankfully, a physicist named Matt Springer (who was a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University when he wrote about this topic in 2010) looked at the actual impact of the coin tosses in the first 43 Super Bowls. He found that the winner of the coin toss went on to win 20 and lose 23 of those games.
Does it matter if a team wins or loses the coin toss?
Aha! you say. So it appears that winning the toss puts a team at a slight disadvantage. No, not really. Just as you don’t expect to always get heads exactly 50 times whenever you toss 100 coins—sometimes you might get 47, sometimes 57, and so on—you also shouldn’t expect that the winner of the toss in a football game will go on to win the game exactly half the time.
In fact, statistics predicts that if the coin toss in a football game truly has no impact on the outcome of the game, then the winner of the toss will win between 18 and 25 of those 43 Super Bowl games with about a 70% probability. There’s about a 95% chance that they’ll win between 15 and 28 of those 43 games. In truth, this analysis is a bit of an oversimplification of things, but it’s fine for our purpose and it’s good enough to tell us that the results through the first 43 Super Bowls are perfectly consistent with a perfectly unimportant coin toss.
What Scores Are Possible in Football?
Today’s third and final Super Bowl math fun fact is actually more of a puzzle. The question is: What are all of the scores that are possible in a football game? Or, turning this around, are there any scores that are impossible?
To answer this, you need to know the different numbers of points that can be awarded:
- 2 points for the relatively rare safety
- 3 points for a field goal
- 6 points for a touchdown
- 7 points for a touchdown and a successful extra-point kick
- 8 points for a touchdown and a successful two-point conversion
Given these, is it possible for a team to score 11 points? How about 37? Can you figure out some way to prove which scores are possible…or impossible? Give it some thought (which should be fun!) and we’ll talk about the answer next time.
Wrap Up
Okay, that’s all the Super Bowl math we have time for today.
Please be sure to check out my book The Math Dude’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Algebra. And remember to become a fan of the Math Dude on Facebook where you’ll find lots of great math posted throughout the week. If you’re on Twitter, please follow me there, too.
Until next time, this is Jason Marshall with The Math Dude’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Make Math Easier. Thanks for reading, math fans!
Football field image from Shutterstock.
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About the Author
Jason Marshall is the author of The Math Dude’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Algebra. He provides clear explanations of math terms and principles, and his simple tricks for solving basic algebra problems will have even the most math-phobic person looking forward to working out whatever math problem comes their way.
