Predicting Super Bowl Results Using One, Unconventional Metric
Ultimately proving fashion does matter in football.
I’ll start this article by saying I know almost nothing about the game of football. Why is a touchdown worth seven points? Why does the referee blow his whistle every five seconds? Why is everyone tackling each other???
What I do know a lot about, however, is using data and analytics to understand trends in fashion and clothing. And football, of course, has an element of clothing to it.
So, with the Super Bowl—one of the biggest sporting and betting events of the year — coming up on Sunday, I have one and only one question to answer: can you predict Super Bowl results based on what color uniform each team is wearing?
Part I: The Data
Tackling (pun-intended) this question was simple. First, I compiled a dataset of Super Bowl results of the past 20 years: what team played, whether or not they won, and what color uniform they were wearing.
Separating possible jersey colors into ‘white’ versus ‘colorful’, I took a look at the relationship between jersey colors and the wins and losses denoted in the dataset.
Then, with a couple of lines of Python code, I was able to calculate what these data points had to say about the likelihood of a team winning.
## TESTING THE PROBABILITY A TEAM WINS THE SUPER BOWL WHILE WEARING WHITE
win_if_wearing_white = 0
for win in super_bowl_wins:
if 'white_jersey' in win:
win_if_wearing_white += 1
probability_win_if_wearing_white = win_if_wearing_white / len(super_bowl_wins) * 100
...Part II: The Results
The results are interesting. In the last 20 years, 88% of teams who won the Super Bowl were wearing white, rather than colorful, jerseys.
There were only two exceptions to this: in 2020 when Kansas City won wearing red, and in 2018 when the Eagles won wearing green.
This is a pretty tremendous statistic. Not only does it suggest teams wearing white jerseys won the Super Bowl more often— it tells us they won over seven times more often. Whoa.
Is there a reason for this? Does a white jersey make a wide receiver more visible to a quarterback? Does fashion really make a difference in football? Data says, it seems like it.
So, ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl game (Kansas City Chiefs versus the Philadelphia Eagles), my bet will be going towards whoever walks onto the field wearing white.
I’m a NYC-based software engineer researching all the ways technology intersects with fashion. Read more of my stuff here, and feel free to get in touch.
