Against All Odds (Take a Look at Her Now)

Warner The Gloucester Daily Times - published out of Gloucester, MA, population 30,000 and allegedly the nation’s oldest seaport - ran this story about Julie Warner. Warner is a local girl made good who will be representing her hometown at Super Bowl XLII as a cheerleader for the New England Patriots.

Now, not much mention is made of Ms. Warner’s football allegiances in her early days (she does admit to being a pretty big fan of her current employer nowadays, though), and stories about “local person connected to major event” are a dime a dozen. But statistically speaking, the odds of Warner not only being a cheerleader, but also a cheerleader for the geographically nearest professional football team, and backing that squad all the way to a Super Bowl, are really quite astounding.

Odds of being a cheerleader in America: 1,500,000 / 301,000,000

Odds of being an NFL cheerleader: 440 / 301,000,000

Odds, among NFL cheerleaders, of being a New England Patriots cheerleader: 24 / 440

Odds, by most Vegas sports books, of Patriots making Super Bowl XLII: .43 / 1

Odds of being from Gloucester, MA: 30,000 / 301,000,000

Not a sure thing among the lot of them, and the final tally is staggering: the odds of Julie Warner, the pride of the nation’s oldest seaport, ever cheering the New England Patriots in a Super Bowl work out to 1 in 1,702,910,000,000,000 - and that’s just among Americans. If the denominators are changed to reflect worldwide populations, her chances were suddenly reduced to 1 in 1,353,940,000,000,000,000.

By way of comparison, the average person’s odds of a being part of a few other long-shot events are as follows:

Odds of catching a foul ball at a baseball game: 1 in 1,189

Odds of bowling a perfect game: 1 in 11,500

Odds of being struck by lightning: 1 in 576,000

Odds of being attacked by a shark in the United States: 1 in 8,000,000

Odds of a meteor landing on your house: 1 in 182,138,880,000,000

To put it another way: the average American would have to lose ten houses to meteor showers before realizing their dream of being a Patriots cheerleader at the Super Bowl.

Here’s to you, Julie Warner, New England Patriots Cheerleader and truly one in a quintillion. And, it should be noted, awfully cute.

And, in an even greater twist of overcoming an assumed statistical impossibility, single. What do you suppose the odds are she dates bloggers?

Tags: nfl cheerleading, nfl cheerleader, nfl cheerleaders

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