Super Bowl LVI will be played in Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium as the city gears for its own home team to play in the game.
In households throughout America, though, there is one other event that adds to the pageantry of Super Bowl Sunday: the box pool, or squares, as you may also know it as.
The key to success in a box pool is the luck of the draw, and to get you ready for a nerve-wracking Sunday based entirely on luck of the draw, here are 13 fun facts about how the 221 previous quarters in Super Bowl history have manifested into box pool stats.
No. 1: The 0-0 box is statistically the odds-on favorite. It has hit 21 times, the most of any single number combination.
No. 2: Of the numbers that have only come out once, the NFC 4, AFC 8 combo had the longest wait, as it didn’t record its first hit until the final score of Super Bowl XLIX was Patriots 28, Seahawks 24 – and the longest drought since it’s only hit belongs to NFC 4, AFC 2, as its lone victory came when the final score of Super Bowl XI was Raiders 32, Vikings 14.
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No. 3: While 0-0 has the single-box record, the best combo/pair of numbers are actually 7 and 0. AFC 7, NFC 0 has come out 12 times and NFC 7, AFC 0 has come out eight times, for a total of 20.
No. 4: Much ado about nothing? Maybe, but 0 is also the best common denominator of sorts. There have been 221 quarters played over 55 Super Bowls, which means 221 possible numbers on each side (and 442 total); AFC 0 has come out a league-high 63 times, NFC 0 has hit a league-high 61 times, together that is a record total of 124 instance of 0.
No. 5: Rounding out absolute zero, the AFC 0 box is the only one that has seen every possible combination hit over the last 55 years; in fact, each combination has hit multiple times, with AFC 0, NFC 2 and AFC 0, NFC 4 both coming up twice each the rest all three times or more.
No. 6: Not shockingly, 7 seems to be the next best number. It has come out 86 times total (45 for the AFC and 41 for the NFC, both second-most in each league) and behind 0-0, the second-most active individual box is AFC 7, NFC 0 (12 hits).
No. 7: A song says “one is the loneliest number,” but in Super Bowl lore, 2 isn’t much better. Both AFC 2 and NFC 2 have hit exactly five times each, and the total of 11 is the second-lowest of any number.
No. 8: The worst? It’s 5, which has come out seven times for the NFC but only three for the AFC.
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No. 9: How about some symmetry? The lone 7-7 box has come out…you guessed it, seven times. But, on the flip side of asymmetry, of the 10 possible mirror boxes (0-0, 1-1, 2-2, etc.), only five have ever come up; aside from 0-0 and 7-7, we’ve seen 3-3 six times, 4-4 three times, and 6-6 twice.
No. 10: There are many different ways to divide up the “score” in a box pool, but regardless of format, nobody is ever upset about a win, let alone two…and there have been 22 games where a single box won multiple quarters, including a bizarre run in Super Bowl 29 where NFC 6, AFC 3 won both the first and second quarters and NFC 0, AFC 3 won both times in the second half.
No. 11: Piggybacking on the last two facts, 0-0 is the most recently responsible box for a dual winner; it was the winning box in the first and fourth quarter in Super Bowl 53. Prior to that it was 4-4 in Super Bowl 49, whose only previous hit before that was the third quarter of Super Bowl 39, we’d say 4-4 has come on strong since the turn of the millennium.
No. 12: Staying on that previous topic, we’re pretty sure that NFC 3, AFC 6 and NFC 8, AFC 6 have produced the happiest pool recipients over the last 50 years. That’s because those two number combos are the only ones to hit three times in the same game, with the former winning the final three quarters of Super Bowl V and the latter taking the final three quarters of Super Bowl XIX.
No. 13: And finishing out this list, here’s a little balance to the force on those two previous boxes: NFC 3, AFC 6 has only come up one other time, that being the final score of Super Bowl XXXIV (almost three decades later), while NFC 8, AFC 6 has never come up in any of the 54 other Super Bowls.
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