Saturday, February 02, 2008

Super Bowl Prediction

The guys from Pizza Box Football have done it again - they web-printed stat sheets for New England & New York and encouraged all of us who are fans of the their game (yep, that's me!) to play faux Super Bowls & report the scores to them.

Last Monday night, Richard & I played, with Richard helming his NY Giants while I took on the role of Bill B. & coached the NE Patriots to a 27-17 win. There was a blocked punt that rolled into the endzone (touchdown NE), an interception run back for a TD (again, score for NE) and a goal line stand by NE at the end of the first half that denied NY the points it needed to catch up.

The preliminary results of all these games played from the Pizza Box guys:

As I write this (games played through 1/30/08):
  • 63% of the time New England wins
  • New York wins 89% of games where they score at least 25
  • New England wins 83% of games where they hold New York below 25
  • New England wins 93% of games where they hold New York below 20
That last bit is the most interesting to me. A slowed-down low-scoring affair seems to favor New England instead of New York. But if New York can get some big plays and score, they stand a chance.

Our final prediction will be updated once all games are in, but right now the scores we've received would put the final score at:

New England 31, New York 17.
My prediction? This will be a boring game. Good thing I'm having some friends over to play board games while the game is on.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:13 PM

    Dude.... Couldn't has miss it more.. One of the best games in a while. I personally am ecstatic that the Pats lost. Because Belachik is a jerk, and Rodney Harrison is a dirty player.
    P.S. Got to play Kingsburg pre-superbowl, so I had my cake and ate it too.

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  2. No kidding - the game was actually enjoyable.

    We played Ra, Das Letzes Paradies, Risk Express, Schildi Strandkrote, Loopin' Louie & Burg Ritter during the game... sweet.

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  3. The following is from the Pizza Box Football guys... thought I'd give 'em a fair addendum to their admittedly wrong prediction.

    We were wrong. We predicted that New England would defeat New York 31-17. They did not. And when we made our prediction, we were wrong not to tell you about another trend in our numbers.

    Most indications from our results were that New England was going to be able to score more than 17 points (79% of the time). In "real life," New England had NEVER been held below 20 points this year. Why, I thought, should I tell you that New York would win 80% of games when New England was held to 17 or less? Why should I tell you that New England was winning 76% of games when they scored more than 17?

    Well... because New England scored only 14 in the Big Game. New York won, 17-14. We ought to have told you, but we didn't.

    We told you to watch for the other 80% trend, the one where New England held New York below 27. New York was winning 83% of games when they scored 27 or more and losing 83% when they scored 26 or fewer points.

    Another thing we held back from you because we didn't know what to make of it. The results set the "line" at New England by 7. Our line was so much lower than Vegas' (12.5) that I didn't report it to you. Next year, I'll do better. No matter what the "conventional wisdom" might say.

    Thanks again to all who played. I hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl as well.

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  5. Glad the Patriots lost. Belicheck isn't nearly as adept a cheater as Carmen Policy. I ALMOST would have cheered for the Packers to beat the Pats if it had come to that. Well...maybe. That would have been almost unbearable, but hey, the Pats done me wrong. I thought they were such a "team concept" team, finally getting some wins after the long years of dismal performances and paper bag wearing fans, but I was wrong. They're just cheaters.

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