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Are you a person who dislikes the Patriots? Then you are going to enjoy this map, which, if you look closely, is a map that shows Patriots fans being sorely disappointed.
Let me explain: Google compiled data on how much people from each city searched for flights to San Francisco around this year's Super Bowl dates. It shows that Denver residents had the highest per capita search volume this football season leading up to their Super Bowl appearance this coming Sunday.
After Denver, though, comes the apparently overconfident Bostonians, who started planning trips out West perhaps a tad too soon. The city had the second-highest per capita search volume around Super Bowl flights; people there were just pretty sure the Patriots would make a repeat appearance. Alas, it was not to be.
The flight map arguably gives a measure of both fan commitment and confidence — who thinks their team will make the Super Bowl and who will go the extra mile (or, in this case, extra thousands of miles) to watch in person.
Patriots fans weren't the only overly confident ones out there. Seattle Seahawks fans (myself included) appeared to overestimate their chances after back-to-back Super Bowl appearances, and came in fifth in search volume.
Panthers fans, meanwhile, seemed to underestimate their team's chances — Charlotte came in sixth for per capita flight search volume.
One thing that surprised me about this map was that there wasn't an especially strong correlation between travel distance and search volume. I would have thought that people who live closer to San Francisco would be more likely to poke around for flights. But football fans in Boston, Baltimore, and here in Washington, DC, prove that theory wrong. Many East Coasters, it appears, would have been at least somewhat interested in a chance to watch the Super Bowl in person. Their teams, however, didn't make that happen.
