Alan Reifman, a Texas Tech statistics professor, predicted the Carolina Panthers had a nearly 90% chance to win Super Bowl 50 over the Denver Broncos.
Reifman looked at two factors, point differential and strength of conference.
Point differential means looking at how many points the two Super Bowl teams scored against their opponents, the Panthers have 192 and the Broncos have 59.
Strength of conference means how many times one conference beat the other.
“It was 35 wins for the NFC over the AFC and 29 for the AFC over the NFC,” Reifman said. “In other words the NFC won six more games over the AFC.”
He then looked at past Super Bowl’s where both of those factors pointed towards one team and found that team would win seven out of eight times.
“The panthers had the better point differential and the NFC was a better conference.”
So Reifman said the Panthers had an 87.5% chance of winning Super Bowl 50.