Super Bowl – Another Blog, Meanwhile

Statistics Saturday: Some Teams Not In The Splendid Bowl This Year

Reference: Shakespeare’s Kings: The Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages, 1337-1485, John Julius Norwich.

(Personal note, the Human Metabolic Pathways is my favorite Kraftwerk tribute band.)

After three overtimes the game will be settled by a fifteen-word spelling bee.
A regulation field is 120 yards in length, 53 and 1/3d yards in width, and 1.16 light-seconds in height, extending six feet, two inches below the surface of the ground.
Any kind of zebra, whether talking or not, is specifically prohibited from playing in the Super Bowl.
Team uniforms are not allowed to be chroma-key green.
The zebra’s also prohibited from the Pro Bowl, Conference Championships, and the Divisional Rounds.
No licking the ball after the two-minute warning.
Yes, a zebra is allowed to play in the wild-card round, but only as a field goal kicker.
All players must exist in no fewer than three dimensions of space and one of time.
If by some chance the offensive team gets to a 7th Down that’s automatically one point.
It’s a 20-yard penalty and loss of possession for four or more players on the offensive team to blep their tongues out simultaneously while behind the line of scrimmage.
No player is allowed to wear his helmet either backwards or on either foot during the game. (However, this rule has never been enforced at the professional level.)
It’s prohibited to use the player’s bench as a workbench for light carpentry projects.

Source: The Kaiser’s Merchant Ships in World War I, William Lowell Putnam.

Not included, Super Bowls 51 through their sad little finale when a lack of interest forces the cancellation of Super Bowl 58.

If current trends continue, then in the year …	… there will have been as many Splendid Bowls as there are or were:
2020	Faces and vertices of the medial rhombic triacontahedron
2026	Days in January and February (non-bissextile years)
2026	Minimum number of games in the National Hockey League postseason (per rules in effect for 2015)
2027	Days in January and February (leap years)
2028	Counties in New York State
2031	Years between a Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania groundhog’s first being recorded to predict the weather and the predictive groundhog’s receiving the name “Phil” ^[1]
2034	Secretaries of State of the United States (as of 2015)
2044	Inches of height of Michael Jordan
2048	Games in a regular National Basketball Association season (as of 2015)
2049	Episodes of the original Star Trek
2054	International Astronomical Union-recognized constellations
2071	Maximum number of games in the National Hockey League postseason (per rules in effect for 2015)
2173	Recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (as of January 2015)
2331	Days in the year
2686	Species of Pokemon revealed as of 2015
9886	Elements of the sporadic Mathieu group M₁₁

¹: Wikipedia’s description is very breezy and chatty, causing me to doubt that the topic has been the subject of credible historical inquiry.

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