Any Given Sunday? Exploring Transitivity in the NFL

Transitive logic aids individuals in judging rank in social and competitive settings. Sport offers an interesting arena within which to evaluate transitivity, given that the competitive environment is characterized by both regularity in performance and upsets. In recent years, researchers have begun to evaluate transitive outcomes in sport, but relatively little work has explored expectations of transitivity in sport outcomes or their relationship to real-world outcomes. The present work helps fill this gap. The research includes both a historical assessment of National Football League (NFL) game results (from 1970 to 2025) and an experimental investigation into expectations of transitivity in hypothetical matchups. The impact of game location and margin of victory were also explored. Consistent with expectations, transitivity was present in real-world outcomes and participants expected transitivity when making predictions about hypothetical game results. Contrary to expectation, game location did not affect transitive likelihood in NFL outcomes, but participants were expectedly sensitive to home field advantage in their predictions. Margin of victory influenced results in the expected direction, with larger margins of victory associated with stronger evidence of transitivity in NFL game results and greater expectations of transitivity in predicted outcomes. Implications and important areas for future research are discussed.