RandBall: Will the Vikings win a Super Bowl before a giant asteroid hits Earth?

Those with an inclination toward doomsday and/or numbers have become fascinated/terrified by news in recent weeks that a large asteroid has a chance to hit Earth in late 2032.

It started with an initial report that “asteroid 2024 YR4” had a roughly 1% chance of making ground on Dec. 22, 2032. It was explained that the likelihood was expected to slightly increase before — hopefully, most of us would agree! — shrinking down to zero as its studied path became clearer.

So far, though, we are still in the “increasing” phase. The likelihood is now up to 3.1% as of Tuesday.

The asteroid, said to be anywhere from 130 to 300 feet across, could wreak regional devastation but is not big enough to destroy the planet. It is also not projected to hit anywhere near Minnesota. That said, it is worth keeping an eye on, just in case.

To help put it in perspective, I have decided to ask this question: Will the Vikings win a Super Bowl before a giant asteroid hits the Earth?

Admittedly, this is a different and decidedly adjacent question to one like “Will the Vikings use the franchise tag on Sam Darnold or perhaps Byron Murphy Jr.,” which is what I tackled on Tuesday’s Daily Delivery podcast.

Let’s start here: The odds of an asteroid hitting the Earth in 2032 are currently similar to but slightly better than the odds of the Vikings winning the next Super Bowl.

BetMGM puts the Vikings at 35 to 1 right now to win Super Bowl LX, owing probably to their raft of free agents and quarterback uncertainty even after a surprising 14-3 season in 2024.

Expressed differently, that’s about a 2.8% chance for the Vikings to win it all next year, a little less than the 3.1% chance an asteroid hits in 2032.

Pure math would tell us that the Vikings have a better chance of winning the Super Bowl sometime before that asteroid arrives, though, since there will be seven more Super Bowls before the possible strike. If the chances were 2.8% every year, the likelihood that the Vikings won one Super Bowl in seven years would be about 20%.

Pure Vikings fans would tell us, though, that the chances of the Vikings ever winning a Super Bowl — let alone sometime before 2032 — are zero.

And NASA will tell us at some point whether the asteroid also has a 0% chance of hitting or whether it is 100%.

If you are the sort of doomsday Vikings fan who also would like to taunt an asteroid, you might say something like my old neighbor Tom said to me as I pondered the subject on social media: “It will miss wide left.”

That’s a good line, and generally speaking I like the Vikings' chances.

J.J. McCarthy won’t even quite be 30 yet upon the asteroid’s projected arrival date in late 2032.

But as always, and perhaps with more urgency than ever, the clock is ticking.