Update: The Cardinals came close, but couldn't end a six-game streak of franchises losing their first Super Bowl appearances. Pittsburgh prevailed 27-23, winning in the franchise's eighth Super Bowl trip.
It has been well documented that the Arizona Cardinals are making the franchise's first Super Bowl appearance, leaving only five teams (Detroit, Cleveland, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Houston) to never win their conference championship.
Yet how did the other 26 teams do in their first-ever Super Bowl appearance? Surprisingly, to me at least, not well. I will preface this by saying it seems like the results should be about 50-50 simply because the historical background of a franchise shouldn't impact the very specific events of any given season.
I might have to reconsider that idea, though, after running the numbers.
First-time Super Bowl participants are 8-18 in the big game, a miserable .307 winning percentage that grows even worse once eliminating meetings between two teams making their first Super Bowl appearances (by necessity, one of those had to win and one had to lose, so the data is not very valuable). There have been four such meetings, so the more reliable data shows a record of 4-14, a .222 winnning percentage.
The four first-time Super Bowl teams to beat a more "experienced" franchise? The 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Minnesota Vikings (third appearance), the 1986 New York Giants beat the Denver Broncos (second appearance), the 2000 Baltimore Ravens beat the New York Giants (third appearance) and the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders (fifth appearance).
Although the sample size is admittedly too small for any real statistical conclusions (I am tempted to analyze the data from the other three major professional sports to fix this), history doesn't bode well for the Cardinals, who face a Steelers team making a record-tying eighth Super Bowl appearance.
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