THE NFL'S SUPER BOWL COIN TOSS STREAK

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V13 2010 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 13, Number 6, February 7, 2010, Article 19

A couple weeks ago we discussed the NASA Space Veteran medal planned to be used in the opening coin toss at today's Super Bowl. Earlier this week an article appeared about the NFL's unusual streak of coin toss wins. -Editor

The Super Bowl coin toss has been an affront to fairness with the NFC winning 13 in a row!

If you thought this was a 50-50 proposition, you were dead wrong and you would have missed out on a chance to make a lot of money over the years. Unlike the game itself – where the AFC has won nine of 12 - the NFC almost always wins it and is currently on a devastating 15-2 run of Super Bowl coin toss victories.

We went looking for answers to the obvious question about how the NFC rigs the coin toss, which had produced a perfect split of 21 heads and 21 tails before last season’s Super Bowl (heads, won by Arizona by the way). But nobody was talking.

Super Bowl XLIV will see captains of each team gather at midfield to conduct the coin toss and sportsbooks the world over offer betting on it – will it be heads or tails and will the NFC or AFC win.

Tails would return the split to a perfect 22-22 through 44 games. And maybe the AFC doesn’t even want to win it. The last time they won was Super Bowl XXXI and the Patriots lost to the Packers. It’s enough to make oddsmakers do flips.

The official silver dollar the NFL uses for the all important coin toss has two sides - NFC North and NFC South," said industry veteran and linesmaker Dan Sharpstein.

To read the complete article, see: NFC Lock to Win Super Bowl Coin Toss (community.foxsports.com/oddsshark/blog
/2010/02/05/nfc_lock_to_win_super_bowl_coin_toss)

I found an image of the medal on the NASA web site. But it only showed one side! Maybe it is a two-headed "coin". -Editor

After traveling more than four million miles, and making 171 orbits around Earth on board space shuttle Atlantis, the Super Bowl XLIV opening-toss coin took a slight detour to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Museum in Canton, Ohio, on Jan. 27, before heading to the Super Bowl.

The coin was flown last November on STS-129 by crew members Commander Charlie Hobaugh, Pilot Barry Wilmore, and Mission Specialists Leland Melvin, Randy Bresnik, Mike Foreman and Bobby Satcher.

After stopping at the Hall of Fame, the coin will journey to Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla., to be the one of the stars of the Super Bowl XLIV pre-game coin toss on Feb. 7.

I only caught snippets of the game. So who won the toss? Sorry - the Steelers didn't make the playoffs, so I was only peripherally aware that there was some sort of sporting event going on. -Editor