Pittsburg wins the Superbowl 24-19

[JoshW]

"Madden NFL 2006" Superbowl Winner Predictions
Electronic Arts sent over the details on their simulation of the SuperBowl on "Madden NFL 2006." The winner of the big day is Pittsburgh! The Steelers beat the Seahawks 24-19 in the simulation. Electronic Arts describes how the game played out: "Steelers moved out to an early lead using the pass and taking advantage of a timely turnover, and then turned to their relentless rushing attack to hold off the surging Hawks and secure the title." As a Steelers fan (sshhhh! Don't tell. I live near Patriots fans), I haven't been this excited about the Superbowl in the long time, and "Madden" just confirmed my own beliefs on the outcome. Don't like the results of EA's simulation? You could do your own simulations of the big game.

http://compsimgames.about.com/b/a/240219.htm

[Scorpion]

Pitt by 10+

[raiders72001]

Why do these simulations come up with dead numbers 19?

[quarm_]

Pitt by 10+

if you would lay -10 on Pitt you are a bookies wet dream

[isetcap]

if you would lay -10 on Pitt you are a bookies wet dream

Nope, he's just a typical Pittsburgh fan. Pittsburgh always gets a huge amount of 'homer' and 'square' action. That's why when the line came out I immediately grabbed the Pitt ML because I knew it was only going to get worse from there. As soon as Seattle gets a solid 4.5, I will have money on that position also.

I'm convinced that the line could have opened at 7.5 and the Pitt squares still would be throwing their money in by the shovelfull.

[Illusion]

I still like Seattle in this one. Public money is all over the Steelers.

[MrX]

Why do these simulations come up with dead numbers 19?

I'm assumming they ran multiple simulations and reported the average score, rounded to integers. If that's the case, the dead number shouldn't be a suprise.

I don't know how statistically sophisticated EA's game is, but as much research goes into these games now, using them in some way to handicap is kinda interesting. A couple years ago after lurking in sabermetrics forums for awhile and hearing how sophisticated Diamond Mind's baseball game was, I decided to use their projection stats to feed into a baseball simulator I wrote, for the purpose of handicapping. The results were less than spectacular. I'm not positive that the main fault was with Diamond Mind's projection stats, but I'm pretty darn close to positive.

[JoshW]

Good answer Mr. X. I had the same question as Raiders, but I don't play Madden, so I thought maybe two point conversions or some BS like that was more likely. Average score is likely the answer. Thank you.