Forget the quarterback ratings.
And forget the prevent defense.
If you want a hands-down, airtight, take-it-to-Las Vegas prediction for the winner of the Super Bowl, there’s one thing to look at — the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And while the BLS doesn’t gather much information about football, it does calculate the unemployment rate.
Why does that matter? Because the team whose city has the lower jobless rate usually wins.
Sanjay Sathe, chief executive of Silicon Valley-based RiseSmart, said he and some colleagues were talking about the upcoming game and somehow got talking about the economy.
Someone thought to make a comparison and they found that the lower jobless rate predicted the Super Bowl winner in 17 of the past 20 years.
“Correlation isn’t causation, of course,” Sathe hurried to add.
RiseSmart offers outplacement help to laid-off workers, using software to churn through the Internet in search of positions that match a job-seeker.
Sathe said he thinks there’s even a reason why teams from bad job markets have a disadvantage: Joblessness is bad for morale, which translates to less enthusiastic fan support.
Don’t buy it? No matter. Data is data.
Sathe said he hasn’t had time to research more than two decades. But in that period, the jobless rate has been wrong just three times. The most recent was in 2008, when the Patriots lost to ... the Giants.
Still, if he were betting — he says he’s not — his money would be on the Patriots. The latest data from the BLS shows metro Boston’s unemployment rate at 5.4 percent, far below metro New York City’s 8.3 percent.
But coach Bill Belichick’s Patriots don’t play in Boston, they play in Foxboro. Still, Foxboro’s unemployment is a cool 5.8 percent: Advantage Patriots.
Not many football purists are going to put more stock in the jobless rate than in the crushing tackles, bruising blocks, acrobatic running and precision passing of the combatants.
Least of all, the coach with a degree in economics – Belichick.
About the Author
