Super Bowl Squares Spreadsheet: Build One in Excel or Google Sheets That Finds the Winner

You can run Super Bowl squares from a spreadsheet, and for a small group that's happy to check a shared link and wait for the host to type in each quarter's score, it works well.

A spreadsheet is good at the parts of a squares pool that are really just bookkeeping. It holds the 100 names in a grid that looks exactly like the paper version, it can randomize the digits fairly with one formula, it can look up the winning square the instant a score goes in, and it can add up who owes what. Google Sheets also gives you a share link, so your players can look at the board on their phones without you texting a photo of a printed sheet around the group chat.

Where a sheet struggles is everything that happens live. It doesn't know the score unless you type it in, it can't let players claim their own squares without also letting them edit everybody else's, and a 10 by 10 grid of tiny cells is fiddly to read on a phone. None of that matters much for ten coworkers, and all of it starts to matter when sixty people at a party want to know who's winning right now. We'll build the sheet first and come back to those limits at the end, so you can judge them against your own group.

Lay out the sheet with the home team's digits across row 1, the away team's digits down column A, the 100 squares in B2 through K11, and a small panel to the right for the team names, the score and the prizes.

Putting the home team across the top and the away team down the side is just a convention, and the game works exactly the same the other way round, but pick one and say so on the sheet so nobody reads their square backwards. Make the grid cells square and wide enough for a first name, set the text to wrap, and add a thick border around B2:K11 so the board stands out from the panel beside it. Leave row 1 and column A empty for now, because the digits don't exist until every square is claimed.

Keep the price, the team names and the prize amounts in their own cells rather than typing them into labels, since the payment tab and the winner formulas both read from them. If you'd rather work out the price and prizes before you open a spreadsheet at all, our walkthrough on how to make Super Bowl squares covers the board size, price and prize decisions step by step.

Randomize the numbers with one formula per axis that sorts the digits 0 to 9 by a list of random values, and run it only after every square on the board is claimed and paid for.

Both versions do the same thing. SEQUENCE writes out the digits 0 through 9, RANDARRAY gives each one a random number between 0 and 1, and the sort puts the digits in the order of those random numbers, so every digit appears exactly once and every order is equally likely. Excel's SORTBY is only in Excel 2021, Excel 2024 and Microsoft 365, so on an older copy of Excel do it by hand: type 0 to 9 down a spare column, put =RAND() in the cell next to each digit, sort the two columns together by the random column, and copy the shuffled digits into B1:K1, then repeat the same shuffle for the side column. The Google Sheets template keeps these formulas on a separate Draw tab instead of on the board, so you copy its result and paste it onto the board as values in one step.

The timing matters more than the formula. Nobody picks their digits, only their square, and the draw is fair because nobody knows which digits any square will get while they're still choosing. Sign-ups can run right up to kickoff, so do the draw once the last square is claimed and the last payment is in, ideally with your group watching on a call or a shared screen, and never touch the board again after that. If you'd rather draw the numbers somewhere everyone can see without sharing your spreadsheet, the Super Bowl squares number generator does the same draw in a browser and you can type its result into the sheet.

The numbers keep changing because random functions recalculate every time the sheet recalculates, and both Excel and Google Sheets recalculate whenever anybody edits any cell, so you lock the draw by replacing the formulas with their values the moment it's done.

Excel:          select B1:K1, Copy, then Home > Paste > Paste Values
                then the same for A2:A11
Google Sheets:  select B1:K1, Copy, then Edit > Paste special > Values only
                then the same for A2:A11

This is the mistake that ruins spreadsheet pools. Microsoft's own documentation says RAND returns a new number every time the worksheet is calculated, and entering anything in another cell counts as a calculation, so the host types the first quarter score into N4, the whole number row quietly reshuffles, and the square that was winning a second ago belongs to somebody else. Players who took a screenshot of their numbers before kickoff will spot it straight away, and there's no fair way to put the old digits back unless somebody saved them.

Pasting the digits back as values turns each cell into a plain number that will never move again, which is exactly what you want once the draw is public. Do it for both the top row and the side column, then click any digit and check the formula bar shows a number rather than a formula. In Google Sheets it's also worth knowing that the version history, opened from the Last edit link at the top of the sheet, shows who changed what and when, so if a player ever questions the draw you can show them the digits haven't been touched since the moment you locked them.

Make the spreadsheet find the winner with an INDEX and MATCH formula that takes the last digit of each team's score with MOD, finds that digit on each edge of the board and returns the name where the row and column meet.

=IF(COUNT(N10:O10)<2,"",INDEX($B$2:$K$11,MATCH(MOD(O10,10),$A$2:$A$11,0),MATCH(MOD(N10,10),$B$1:$K$1,0)))

Set up a small prize table in M10 to P13, with the scoring period in column M, the home team's running score in column N, the away team's running score in column O and the formula above in column P. Paste the formula into P10 and fill it down to P13, and each row will show its winner as soon as you type both scores. The IF(COUNT(...)) wrapper keeps a row blank until both scores are in, because a blank score would otherwise be read as a zero and hand the prize to whoever holds the 0 and 0 square. The formula works the same in Excel and Google Sheets.

In that example a 7 to 3 first quarter pays whoever sits where the home 7 column crosses the away 3 row, and a 14 to 10 halftime pays the home 4 against the away 0. Write the prizes in as the actual dollar amounts you'll hand over, decided and shared before anyone pays, and put the overtime decision in writing too, since the last prize can go to the final score with overtime included or to the score at the end of regulation. Our Super Bowl squares rules walk through overtime, empty squares and the other calls worth making in advance, and the Super Bowl squares payout tables show what every board size and price adds up to.

For the finishing touch, highlight the square that's winning right now. Select B2:K11, add a conditional formatting rule that uses a custom formula (Format, then Conditional formatting in Google Sheets, or Home, then Conditional Formatting, then New Rule in Excel), paste the formula below and pick a fill color.

=AND(COUNT($N$4:$N$5)=2,B$1=MOD($N$4,10),$A2=MOD($N$5,10))

Whenever you update the current score in N4 and N5, the matching square lights up on the grid, which is the nearest a spreadsheet gets to a live board.

Track payments on a second tab with one row per player, where a COUNTIF counts each person's squares straight off the board, a multiplication gives what they owe, and a Paid column marked Yes feeds a running total.

Players tab, row 2 (fill each formula down):
A2  player name, spelled exactly as on the board
B2  =COUNTIF(Board!$B$2:$K$11,A2)        squares held
C2  =B2*Board!$N$7                       amount owed
D2  Yes once they've paid
Totals:
=SUMIF(D2:D60,"Yes",C2:C60)              collected so far
=100-COUNTA(Board!$B$2:$K$11)            squares still open

The COUNTIF only matches names spelled the same way, so decide early whether the board uses first names, initials or full names, and stick to it. A player listed as Mike on the board and Mike R. on the Players tab will show zero squares and look like they owe nothing. Tracking by person rather than by square number is deliberate, because squares can still be swapped or moved before the digits are drawn, and what you really need to know is whether each person has paid for the number of squares they hold.

The open-squares count tells you when the board is ready for the draw, and it also tells you how much money is still missing from the prizes you promised. According to our data, the most common Super Bowl prices are $1, $2, $5 and $10 a square, so a full board usually collects between $100 and $1,000. If a few squares are still empty at kickoff, the cleanest fix is to fill the board, with you or your players buying the rest at the same price everyone else paid, so every prize still lands on a real person. Our guide to football squares payouts covers how to split the prize pool across the four scoring periods.

Share the spreadsheet as view-only, take square claims by message and type the names in yourself, and protect the digits and formulas so that even a co-host with edit access can't change them by accident.

A view-only link is the safe default in Google Sheets, since anyone can open the board on a phone and nobody can change it. The catch is that every claim then comes through you, so the host, or commissioner if your group likes that title, spends the week before the game copying names from texts into cells. Giving everyone edit access saves you that job and creates a worse one, because a single wrong paste can wipe another player's square, overwrite a locked digit or break the winner formula, and an honest mistake like that is still an argument on game night.

If you do share edit access with a co-host, open Data, then Protect sheets and ranges, in Google Sheets and protect row 1, column A, the prize table and the whole Players tab, so only you can change them. Excel has a similar option under Review, then Protect Sheet, and works best if you share the file through OneDrive so everyone sees the same copy instead of emailing versions back and forth. Either way, keep a copy of the locked board somewhere other than the shared file, such as a PDF export sent to the group right after the draw, so there's a record nobody can edit.

A Super Bowl squares spreadsheet can't follow the game, so it never knows the score until you type it in, it can't show who's on track to win the quarter that's still being played unless you keep updating it, and it can't let players claim their own squares safely.

That's fine if you're watching the game with your laptop on your knees and don't mind updating two cells after every score. It's harder at a real party, where you're also the person hosting, and every time someone wants to know whether their square is winning they either text you or check a sheet that only shows whatever you last typed. Players at different houses only see the board as fresh as your last update, and the tiny grid is hard to read on a phone without pinching and zooming around it.

This is the gap Play Squares was built for. Players open the board from a link or a QR code, claim their own squares without being able to touch anyone else's, and the numbers are randomized for you once the board is full. During the game the score updates on its own and the board shows the pending winner, meaning the square that would win the current quarter if the score held right now, as well as the settled winners for the quarters already played. Everyone checks their own squares on their own phone instead of asking you, and you keep one record of who has paid. The money still moves directly between you and your players, just as it does with a spreadsheet, and Play Squares never holds it. Our guide on how to read football squares shows the same live board from a player's side.

Use a spreadsheet if your group is small, everyone is in the same room, and you enjoy building the sheet, and use an online board if your players are spread out, there are more than a couple dozen of them, or you'd rather watch the game than keep a grid up to date.

A well-built sheet with a locked draw, a winner formula and a payment tab is a perfectly fair way to run a pool, and it's miles better than a grid on paper where someone writes the numbers in by hand. The formulas in this article cover the whole job from claims to payouts. If you only want something to print and pass around the room, our printable Super Bowl squares template fills in the team names, price and prizes for you, and if you want the board to run itself on the night, the Super Bowl squares page shows what that looks like on Play Squares. Whichever you choose, the rules that keep it fair are the same: claims first, payments in, a draw everyone can see, and prizes written down before anyone pays.