Praying for the Super Bowl? You're in Good Company

Whether you're a die-hard football fanatic or someone who's only at this Super Bowl bash for the wings and the sliders, it turns out that this event may have more religious significance than you think. A new survey shows that fully half of all Americans think that God or some sort of supernatural force plays a part in determining the outcome of the Super Bowl. In other words, God might just be a sports fan.

A quarter of all American sports fans have prayed to God to help their team out, the survey shows. And an additional 19 percent believe more generally that God is involved in determining the outcome of a game. These numbers aren't necessarily surprising given how religious Americans are, but it is worth pointing out that football fans tend to be the most likely to seek supernatural assistance for their team. It turns out 33 percent of football fans ask God to intervene in games, well above the average for all sports. Football fans are also more likely to engage in good-luck rituals before games, 25 percent of saying they've done so compared to 18 percent among fans of other sports.

In other words, there's a lot of supernatural Super Bowl mojo swirling around today.

Though some have questioned how football can be a part of Christian culture when it involves such a high risk to its players, it's clear that for many Americans, religion and football are still very much tied up in one another. And up to half of the 108 million people who watch the Super Bowl believe that the event has significance beyond the human realm.

So, does God control the outcome of games? Well, whenever you have an all-knowing, all-powerful creator god, it kind of goes without saying that everything is his fault – I mean that he's responsible for everything. But I wouldn't be watching him to deflect passes away from the end zone in today's game. He's been keeping a pretty low profile these past few millennia and probably would want to avoid the cameras. Sorry, sports fans.

Though, as it turns out, not all supernatural attention may be good attention; 25 percent of sports fans also think their team might have been cursed to perform poorly.

So as you attend your Super Bowl parties today, take comfort in the knowledge that, according to the American people, there's a 50/50 chance that God's attention is fixed on the game, too – meaning now might be a good time to get up to trouble while he's distracted.

Image: Wikipedia Commons