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"Super Bowl Babies": Do Counties with Super Bowl Winning Teams see Increases in Births Nine Months Later? George M. Hayward1 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Anna Rybinska University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1Direct all correspondence to George M. Hayward, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 155 Hamilton Hall - CB 3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27517. Email: [email protected]. Phone: 484.201.4864. The authors would like to thank Phil Morgan for helpful suggestions throughout the development of this paper. This research received support from the Population Research Training grant (T32 HD007168) and the Population Research Infrastructure Program (P2C HD050924) awarded to the Carolina Population Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Super Bowl Babies On February 7th, 2016, a Super Bowl commercial triggered a flurry of excitement across the Internet and social media platforms. Even before airing, it garnered online attention from the dozens of news outlets such as the NFL, Fox Sports, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CBS, CNN, USA Today, and the Huffington Post. The commercial begins with the following claim: "Data suggests 9 months after a Super Bowl victory, winning cities see a rise in births" (NFL 2016b). The rest of the commercial features choirs of children – allegedly conceived on the nights of previous Super Bowls – singing a modified version of Seal's "Kiss from a Rose" while dressed in the regalia of their hometown football teams. The lyrics of the song tell a compelling, provocative, and plausible story: "Ba-dada, da-da-da, da, da, da, Bada-da What makes the Super Bowl so Super? A day we adore It is a day So super, it's why we were born In the end When our team won Mom and Dad looked at each other One thing led to another that night (all) We're all babies! It all happened on the night that a Super Bowl was played Ooh, that's why we're here singing this sweet serenade And now Super Bowl 50 is here So much reason for cheer (Seal) Tonight." [The full version music video, available online, contains the additional lyrics,] "When there were no more jalapeno-chili-bacon chicken wings Mommy and dad They cuddled, canoodled, all night Baby! On that night our moms and dads we so filled with desire (Filled with desire!) And here we stand, a baby choir" (NFL 2016a). The clear assumption here is that the euphoria following a Super Bowl victory leads to increased intercourse among local fans of that team. There is indeed some evidence that birth 1 Super Bowl Babies rates spike nine months after large sporting events (Montesinos et al. 2013). There is also some evidence, however, that perceived spikes in birth rates are not always supported by the data. This turned out to be the case with the New York City blackout, for example (Udry 1970). Preliminary attempts to contact the National Football League (NFL®) have been unsuccessful, so it is impossible to exactly replicate or extend their analyses. Unfortunately, it is unclear where the NFL® obtained their data and how their analyses were conducted. It is also unclear how they define cities and whether their findings are within or between cities. It is quite possible that both winning cities and losing cities see increases in births, for example. Given that the Super Bowl is an annual event in the United States that attracts millions of viewers and potential parents, it is worth investigating whether there are truly annual cohorts of "Super Bowl Babies" that have heretofore gone unrecognized. To examine this phenomenon, we use county-level birth data across the United States for the nine Super Bowls that correspond to the 2003-2011 seasons. We test the NFL’s claim by first analyzing Super Bowl winning counties individually. We then compare Super Bowl winning counties to Super Bowl losing counties. Given the NFL's assumption that the euphoria of victory leads to increases in intercourse that lead to births nine months later, counties of the winning teams should have larger increases in births than counties of losing teams. Finally, we test another idea that goes beyond the NFL commercial. While the Super Bowl is only a brief event on a single day, the NFL playoffs that precede it are a month long. Until teams are eliminated, there is a chance that they will eventually win the Super Bowl – a realization that likely produces some combination of hope, optimism, and positivity among the fans. With each playoff win, these feelings could become even more real, producing mini-euphoric moments at each advancement. In other words, winning the Super Bowl may produce the climax of euphoria, but each leg of the journey may be 2 Super Bowl Babies accompanied by gradually increasing euphoria. Therefore, following the NFL’s assumption that a euphoric sensation is linked to increased births, we also test whether a team’s tenure in the NFL playoffs is associated with county-level birth increases. METHODS Data and Measures Births. While the NFL commercial specifically claims that “cities” of winning teams see increases in births, we use county-level birth data here instead. Our first and primary reason for doing so is a practical one: it is publicly available. Second, there is ambiguity regarding the term “city” and how it applies to NFL teams (for example, which cities correspond to the “Arizona” Cardinals or “New England” Patriots?). Third, we believe that any true birth increases in cities will be absorbed and reflected by county data. This is for two reasons: 1) most counties under consideration include the cities of their teams and 2) it is likely that teams’ fans also reside in their respective counties. Following this second point, we do not presume that fans within proper city limits are necessarily more fanatical nor euphoric following a victory than fans a few miles away in the same county. All county-level birth data are obtained from the CDC WONDER database (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2016a, 2016b). Births are available by month for all counties in the United States from 2003-2014. However, counties containing less than 100,000 people are aggregated into an “unidentified” category, and we exclude these from analyses. This leaves 580 counties with populations over 100,000. Of these counties, 56 only have data for one year – 2014 – and this is because they were not populous enough to be included prior. Another 2 counties are missing data for only one year, which is also 2014, because they were no longer large enough to 3 Super Bowl Babies be included. These 58 counties are excluded from analyses, leaving 522 counties with monthly birth data for all 12 years. Connecting counties to teams. Stadium names and locations are available on each NFL team’s website. The city listed for every stadium address is used to identify the corresponding county with Google Maps. Most teams (20 out of 32) play in a city that corresponds exactly to their team name (e.g., the Atlanta Falcons play in Atlanta), and thus the county of the stadium is the same as the county of the city. There are two special cases: the Baltimore Ravens and St. Louis Rams. Baltimore and St. Louis are both cities and counties, and data are available for both. For consistency, their counties are used instead of their cities. Of the remaining 12 teams, there are 5 whose names apply to broader regions. These are the Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, and Tennessee Titans. There are another 5 whose names actually belie their true location: the Dallas Cowboys (who play in Arlington, Texas), the New York Giants and the New York Jets (who share a stadium and play in East Rutherford, New Jersey), the San Francisco 49ers (who play in Santa Clara, California), and the Washington Redskins (who play in Greater Landover, Maryland). Finally, there are 2 teams that play in a different city than their name suggests but within the same county as that city. These are the Buffalo Bills (who play in Orchard Park, New York) and the Miami Dolphins (who play in Miami Gardens, Florida). While different arguments can be made for which counties best represent the fans of these teams, all counties are chosen based upon the stadium’s location for consistency. Because the New York Giants and the New York Jets share a stadium, they also share a county and are thus conflated to represent one team. Fortunately, they only both make the playoffs on one occasion, and they exit after the exact same amount of time. Table 1 summarizes this information below. 4 Super Bowl Babies [Table 1 about here.] Super Bowls and playoffs. All playoff games, including Super Bowls, and their dates are obtained from NFL.com (NFL Enterprises 2016). We limit the analyses to seasons for which we have birth data at least 18 months before and after the October following each Super Bowl. This leaves us with nine Super Bowls and sets of playoffs that correspond to the 2003-2011 seasons, presented below in Table 2. Because seasons take place during the end of the calendar year, the playoffs and Super Bowl for a given season happen in the following calendar year. For example, the 2003 season ended on 12/28/2003. The first playoff games began on 1/3/04 and the Super Bowl took place on 2/1/04. Therefore, the expected birth spike for the 2003 season is October 2004. [Table 2 about here.] Additional measures.

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