The Super Bowl, Groundhog Day, and “Ubiquitous Palindromes”
Beware…the nerdery is strong in this one.
02/02/2020; A date which in America is Groundhog Day and Super Bowl Sunday. But for number nerds out there, it’s also a perfect eight-digit date palindrome; the numbers are the same read forward or backward. Unlike Groundhog Day, this is not something which happens every year. That’s why it’s number nerd factor is so high. Think about it. Using all eight-digits in “02022020” means it is a perfect “ubiquitous palindrome.”
In non-nerd speak, that means it holds up no matter if you use the typically American “month/day/year” format or the more international “day/month/year” style. Every number calculator I have says this has not happened since 11/11/1111, and will not occur again until 12/12/2121. After that your next shot is 03/03/3030. Feel free to insert your own “Zager and Evans” jokes here.
But today’s Super Bowl features it’s own bit of “non-every year” quirkiness. Since it’s inception, the Super Bowl is almost always a match between a team with roots in the original National Football League (NFL) and one whose roots are in the original American Football League. That’s because the National Football Conference (NFC) now is home to most of the old-school NFL squads, as the American Football Conference (AFC) features mostly teams whose roots lie in the old AFL. There are some exceptions to that due to the re-alignment that happened when the two league completed their merger in 1970, and teams that were founded after that date are still originally NFL teams.
For that reason, occasionally we will get a match-up between two teams whose roots lie in the original NFL. The last time that happened was Super Bowl XLV on February 6th, 2011 when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-125. The Packers trace their roots back to the foundational bedrock of the NFL in 1920, and the Steelers came to the NFL as an expansion team in 1933, but were re-aligned to the AFC after the 1970 merger.
But today’s match-up between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs marks the first time since 2013 when neither Super Bowl contestant has it’s roots in the original NFL. The Kansas City Chiefs were an original AFL franchise, having been found in 1960 as the Dallas Texans; they re-located to Kansas City as the Chiefs in 1963. But the origins of the San Francisco 49ers go back to the All-American Football Conference (AAFC), which merged with the NFL in 1948. Only two current teams can trace their lineage back to this now-defunct league; the aforementioned 49ers and today’s Baltimore Ravens, who were the original AAFC Cleveland Browns before they moved to Maryland in 1996.
Since neither of these teams have lineage from the original NFL, we here at Dubsism have already given you reasons why you shouldn’t cheer for either the Chiefs or the 49ers. If you aren’t familiar with either team, and would like to support one, well…we’ve got you covered there too…
Now, just imagine what we will have to write about come 12/12/2121…
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