Mullis: Ridiculous football predictions reveals the beauty in sports

My father has run this complicated NFL playoff pool among family and friends for the last 21 years. It involves picking the winner of each game and predicting whether the combined score of each game will be over or under 45 points.

Every correct answer earns an increasing number of points. First place earns 50 percent of the pool money, second place gets 25 percent, and third place gets 20 percent. And the remaining 5 percent? The lowest card and anyone who picked the Super Bowl winner but didn't place split that equally.

I told you it was complicated.

Several years ago, my kids wanted to join the pool. My son was a ferocious football fan and my daughters just wanted to be included. Since then, I’ve noticed my family picks teams in a predictable manner.

My husband goes with his gut. I go with my heart. My son goes with statistical analysis. My daughters go with board games...or handstand contests.

Unlike my husband and son, football fans who watch a lot of football, or even me, a baseball fan who watches a little football, my daughters watch zero football. When it’s time for the playoffs, they pay for one card and fill it out by challenging each other to contests.

Board games, card games, coin-tosses – it’s a true lottery. Whoever wins each mini-battle gets to pick something on the card, using such formidable sports logic as which city they would rather visit, how cool the team name sounds, or who has the best-looking quarterback.

It amuses my son, who helps them with team seeding and enlightens them with just how insane some of their results are. It also amuses my father and, well, anyone who looks at their picks and wonders what they were thinking.

Most years, none of us win money except my daughters, who somehow manage to get a cut of that 5 percent.

But not this year. This year, going into the big game, my daughters’ card is tied for the most points. In fact, they are the only ones to have both of their Super Bowl teams still alive. Of course, this was news to them. It was news to all of us.

I think my son suspected something because, in the middle of the AFC Championship game, he tried to bribe my youngest daughter to take the “ju-ju” off Jacksonville so they would win and he would rise in the standings. After my son had explained to my daughter that she had picked New England, she refused his bribe and watched the last half of the game, cheering like a die-hard Patriots fan.

After that, she forgot all about football until my mother texted her. Apparently, my father audibly gasped while crunching the numbers. No matter who wins the Super Bowl, my daughters’ card will win money and not out of the losing 5 percent of the pool, but the winning 95 percent.

Upon hearing this, my son started checking my father’s math. Hey, what else can a stat guy do when faced with the inexplicable?

My youngest daughter was jubilant, gloating about her prognostication skills until I bet she couldn’t name who was playing against New England in the Super Bowl.

She gave me a smug smile.

“They’re playing the Patriots.”

And the whole sports-loving world groans.

She did better than my oldest daughter, who, after learning the news, couldn’t name either team she had helped pick.

Honestly, I loved that this happened. Sports have a magic about them that trumps stats and guts and hearts, which is why we keep coming back. If the outcomes were predictable, it would be half as much fun.

Nicole L.V. Mullis is the author of “A Teacher Named Faith." Contact her at nlvm.columns@gmail.com.