Odds of winning the Rams schedule contest are not favorable

Have you made any grand plans for how to spend the $100,000 prize in the St. Louis Rams schedule prediction contest? Well, you might want to hold off, or at least temper your expectations. The odds of winning the contest are, um, pretty slim.

Chase Stuart at Football Perspective ran the numbers. Your odds of winning the contest are:

1-in-36 quadrillion.

I know, I know. I'm not a math major, so while the term QUADRILLION sounds really big, it needs a little context. Your odds of winning the $400 million Powerball jackpot in February of this year were 1-in-175 million. Those are way better odds for a lot more money.

The odds of the Rams winning the Super Bowl this season are 50/1.

From Stuart:

With a grand prize of just $100,000, this has to be in the running for worst contest ever. The expected value upon entering the contest is $0.0000000000028. It is literally not worth a second of your time to enter this contest.

For the Rams, though, the contest offers some nice benefits. St. Louis will receive some positive PR, particularly among those who are not mathematically-inclined. And to enter, one has to provide the Rams with their home address, email address and phone number, valuable information for the St. Louis marketing department. So this is certainly a good deal for the Rams.

You're also not allowed to run a script that does multiple entries for you, per the rules. So it's really just an sort of educated guess or nothing.

The Rams definitely get a marketing win, and this is a team that's got to take wins however it can get them.

But worst contest ever? I don't know about that. Because maybe you're the one in 36 quadrillion walking away with $100,000 (before taxes are taken out) of Stan's jack.