So you’ve shown your support for friends, family, co-workers’ kids and bought a few Super Bowl squares. Now that the feeling of being a philanthropist has subsided, one thought emerges: What’s in this for No. 1?
Well, if your squares include the numbers 0, 3 or 7, there might be some money in it for you.
Those three numbers have been the most common final digits in a Super Bowl quarter or final score – football squares operate on a 100-square grid formed by the final digit in each team’s score at the end of the first three quarter and at game’s end. Among all the winning digits in the first 46 Super Bowls, the numbers 0, 3 and 7 have been among those 63 percent of the time: 0 led with 27 percent; 7 with 21 percent; and 3 with 15 percent.
That’s more pronounced in the first quarter where the numbers 0, 3 and 7 have been winning quarter-score numbers in 82 of the possible 92 possible occurrences.
Previous winning numbers don’t predict which numbers will come up in Sunday’s Super Bowl. But the reason that numbers like 0, 7 and 3 have been winners so often in prior Super Bowls is that they are football-friendly numbers. In a sport that counts 3 for a field goal and 7 for a converted touchdown, a score with 2 or 8 as the final digit is infrequent.
In fact, 2 and 8 are the worst football square numbers possible. In the previous 46 Super Bowls – with four quarter-scores for each of two teams – 2 and 8 have each been digits in a winning square just nine out of 368 possible occurrences (2 percent). The number 5 has only been part of a winner 10 times (3 percent).
The numbers 1, 4, 6 and 9 are middle-of-the-pack, having appeared on winning squares between 5 and 10 percent of the time.
But timing is also crucial in being a football square-winning number.
The number 0 has been the most frequent square winner for two reasons: 10 is a common football score; and it’s the default, game-starting score. And because of the latter, the number 0’s winning percentage drops as the game goes on.
Have a 0 in your square for the first quarter? You’re golden. In the 46 Super Bowls, 0 has been at the end of a quarter-score 43 times of a possible 92 (47 percent). But that percentage drops each quarter, going down to 30 percent in the second quarter, 20 percent in the third and 13 percent for the final score.
Likewise, the number 3’s winning chances drop by quarter, going from 23 percent, to 18, to 12, to 8. The number 3 was the final digit in just seven of 92 final Super Bowl scores.
By contrast, the numbers 1 and 5 gain momentum as games progress as the chances of a multiple-of-7 score of 21 or 35 increases. Neither has been the final digit of a first-quarter Super Bowl score. But by the final score, the number 1 has been as frequent of a winner as 0, with its percentages going from 0, to 3, to 7, to 13.
The number 7 is the most consistent winner with its Super Bowl percentages being 20 in the first quarter, 18 in the second, 24 in the third and 22 in the final score.
