10 Random Facts and Stats from Super Bowl 57

While everyone else was busy WATCHING last night’s game, I used my time to search the interwebs for some random facts to share with you about Super Bowl 57.  Here are 10 random facts and stats about the game:

1. This was the first Super Bowl with two Black starting quarterbacks:  Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts.  Both are also from Texas.  In 1988, Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to start a Super Bowl.  He led Washington to a 42-10 win over Denver, and was named MVP.
2. Mahomes and Hurts had a combined age of 51 years, 337 days on Sunday, surpassing Joe Montana and Dan Marino in 1985 as the youngest Super Bowl QB matchup of all-time.
3. Have you ever wondered how Super Bowl tickets are distributed?  It isn’t just a free-for-all on Ticketmaster.  Here’s how the tickets are divided: Both teams (in this case, Kansas City and Philadelphia) got access to 17.5%.  The host team, the Arizona Cardinals, got 5%.  The remaining 29 teams got 34.8% (or 1.2% each).  And the NFL got the rest, 25.2%.
4. Cleveland is the only city with an NFL team that has not gone to the Super Bowl AND not hosted.  The other teams that have not gone to the game but are in cities that have hosted are the Detroit Lions, the Houston Texans and the Jacksonville Jaguars.
5. The NFL spent TWO YEARS preparing the grass (that everyone was slipping on) for the field at the Super Bowl.  The grass was grown at a local sod farm in Phoenix.  It was installed two weeks ago, and the total cost was $800,000.
6. This year, Mahomes did these four things:  Won the regular season MVP, won the Super Bowl MVP, led the NFL in passing touchdowns and led the NFL in passing yards.  Only three players have done in a WHOLE CAREER what Mahomes did this season – Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Kurt Warner.
7. Mahomes is the first player in NFL history to win multiple championships AND multiple league MVPs within his first six seasons.
8. Kansas City rookies Isiah Pacheco and Skyy Moore both scored a touchdown.  The Chiefs are the second team to have two different rookies score a TD in the Super Bowl, joining the 1985 Bears, who had rookies William Perry and Reggie Phillips score.
9. The color of the Gatorade shower this year was PURPLE.  Some gambling sites that hosted prop bets gave purple the second-longest odds of coming out, behind only the chance that there’d be NO Gatorade shower.
10. A lot of football fans were caught in the middle and watched the Super Bowl without rooting for either team.  If you were LITERALLY and PHYSICALLY halfway between Kansas City and Philadelphia you’d be in Gettysburg, Ohio.  It’s a small town of 463 people, just northwest of Dayton, Ohio.