Who will win Super Bowl XLI?

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As I discussed last week, there's a system that I've been using for the past 16 years that has correctly predicted the Super Bowl winner 14 times. It involves 12 predictors that each successfully predict the Super Bowl winner roughly 55 to 70 percent of the time, but taken together they work even better. Last year, for the first time in those 16 years, we had to go to the tie-breaker when the categories were tied 6-6 between the Steelers and Seahawks ( Can you predict the Super Bowl winner?).

The twelve categories are broken into five defensive statistics, four offensive and three overall. The winning percentage for each of the categories is based on how often that category favored the eventual Super Bowl winner. The chart below shows all of the percentages.

Now let's look at Super Bowl XLI:

The Bears take the last eight categories, which are the best predictors, all at 60% or better. Of those eight, five are defensive, which confirms the adage: Defense wins championships. Overall, the Bears take nine categories and the Colts only two, with one tie. There have been 18 occasions where the system favored one of the teams with nine or more categories. That team has won 15 times.

The system leans significantly towards the Bears winning their first Super Bowl in 21 years.

I want to give credit to Jim Henzler from my days over at STATS, Inc for helping me develop the system. Jim, who also collaborated with Bill James on his book Win Shares, came up with the main elements of this system back in the early 90's.