Monday, January 4, 2010

What Are the Odds?

Next weekend, there are four NFL wildcard playoff games. Three of them (Packers versus Cardinals, Cowboys versus Eagles and Jets versus Bengals) are rematches of those teams' last regular season games, played yesterday.

Since the regular season schedules were developed months ago, long before the NFL could know which teams would make the playoffs, it could not have been designed that way. Also, the playoff match-ups could have been a bit different if Sunday's games had turned out differently (if the Jets had lost, they would not be in the playoffs; the Vikings were not guaranteed a first-round bye before Sunday's games had been played).

So, has this ever happened before? Any sports betting enthusiasts or statistics majors want to calculate the odds of three week-later rematches out of four wildcard games?

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