Why is the Bears' magic number twelve?

Here in Chicago we've been getting a lot of publicity from our Super Bowl Predictor System. With everyone outside of Chicago picking the Colts and the point spread favoring Indy by seven, it's a breath of fresh air for Bears fans to see an objective method which favors the Monsters of the Midway. As you saw in last week's Stat of the Week™, the Predictor System gave nine of the twelve indicators to the Bears, two to the Colts, and one tie.

But there are a couple of addendums to the Predictor System that are particular to this year's Super Bowl contestants and also favor Chicago:

Going back to the 1982 Super Bowl, one of the Super Bowl teams has allowed 50 fewer points during the course of the season than the other team eleven times. All eleven games were won by the team with the significantly better defense, as defined by the 50-point spread. The Bears' defense has allowed not just 50 points less than the Colts' defense. It's allowed 105 points less over the course of the regular season. That's a significant advantage in favor of the Bears.

Here's the other one: The Bears won nine of the twelve prediction indicators, and after tying one, they lost only two. Looking at all the teams who have gone into one of the previous 40 Super Bowls, there have been twelve occasions when one of the teams has had two or fewer indicators against them. On those twelve occasions, the team with two or less indicators against them has won eleven times. The only time a team lost in this situation was when the upstart AFL Kansas City Chiefs beat the eventual four-time Super Bowl loser Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.

The magic number is then twelve for the Chicago Bears. They want to become the twelfth team in a row to win the Super Bowl because of their significantly superior defense. And they want to become the twelfth team (out of 13) in Super Bowl history to win the Super Bowl having lost two or fewer of our prediction indicators.

More numbers in favor of the underdog Chicago Bears. For us Bears fans, we hope the final numbers of the game favor them as well.