How to Root for Your Favorite NFL Team - In My Case, The New Orleans Saints

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I was born and raised in New Orleans. As a National Football League (NFL) fan, I am still a New Orleans Saints fan to this day even though I now live in Houston, Texas. As I have watched football every tear, I have often wondered which team I should be rooting for in games that don't involve the Saints. With the 2024-2025 season about to be upon us. I decided to design and make a spreadsheet that would tell me who to pull for.

The Spreadsheet reflects:

• The eighteen-week season - seventeen regular season games plus one bye week.
• The thirty-two NFL teams with sixteen teams in the American Football Conference and sixteen teams in the National Football Conference.
• A relationship between cells wherein if one team wins, the other team loses. I entered a "W" for a home team win or an "L" for a home team loss. The visiting team's cell uses a formula that reflects the opposite of what appears for the home team. Ties are rare, so if they happen, I will handle those manually.

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To see what the best outcome for the New Orleans Saints would be, there are only three simple rules:

1. The Saints win all of their games.
2. Since the Saints are members of the National Football Conference, any time a National Football Conference team plays an American Football Conference team, the American Football Conference Team wins. This worsens the win-loss records of teams in the Saints' conference.
3. For games not impacted by rules 1 and 2, the home team wins. This establishes parity among the non-Saints teams.

A season that followed these rules would unfold as:

The standings for the season would look like:

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As I mentioned, I do live in Houston now. The Houston Texans are my second-favorite team. Ignoring the Saints for a moment, a copy of the spreadsheet could be filled out as:

1. The Texans win all of their games.
2. Since the Texans are members of the American Football Conference, any time an American Football Conference team plays a National Football Conference team, the National Football Conference Team wins. This worsens the win-loss records of teams in the Texans' conference.
3. For games not impacted by rules 1 and 2, the home team wins. This establishes parity among the non-Texans teams.

A season that followed these rules would unfold as:

The standings for this Texans season would look like:

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Since I have two teams of interest, I decided to place the results side by side by week.

As you can see, in many cases, my loyalties are at odds. I can adjust the rows of the spreadsheet with actual results so I can see who to root for in terms of winning the division, home-field advantage, etc. These spreadsheets reflect wishful thinking. There's no way some of these teams will win against their superior rivals, but believing there's a chance is what fandom is all about.

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If you'd like to play with this for your favorite team, here's a link to a neutral spreadsheet where all home teams win. On the schedule tab, you can replace the wins ("W") with losses ("L") for the home team rows that you wish to manipulate (e.g., opponents of your favorite team). You can see the resulting standings on the standings tab.

Download all-home-wins-visitor-losses.xlsx (28.0K)

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