From hand-drawn grids to a game day tradition
Nobody knows exactly who invented football squares. There is no patent, no inventor on record, and no single moment where the game was born. What we do know is that by the 1970s and 1980s, the game was showing up in offices, bars, and living rooms across the country, especially around Super Bowl time.
The concept is beautifully simple, which is probably why it spread so quickly. Someone draws a 10 by 10 grid on a piece of paper. People write their names in the squares. The rows and columns get assigned random numbers 0 through 9. And then you watch the game. At the end of each quarter, you check the last digit of each team's score, find the matching square, and that person wins.
The genius of the game is that it requires absolutely no knowledge of football. You do not need to know the teams, the players, or the rules. The numbers are random. Everyone has the same chance of winning, which is what made it perfect for the one event that brings together sports fans and non-fans alike: the Super Bowl.
Football squares existed before the Super Bowl became a cultural event, but the two grew up together. The first Super Bowl was played in 1967, and over the next two decades it transformed from a championship game into an unofficial national holiday. By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Super Bowl parties were everywhere, and squares became the go-to activity for keeping everyone at the party engaged.
The timing of football makes squares work perfectly. The game is divided into four quarters with natural breaks in between. Each break gives you a chance to check the score and announce a winner. That rhythm keeps people interested from kickoff through the final whistle, even if the game itself is a blowout.
Today, the Super Bowl regularly draws over 100 million viewers in the United States alone. It is estimated that millions of Americans participate in some form of football squares game during the Super Bowl, making it one of the most widely played party games in the country. If you are looking to set up a game for the big game, check out our Super Bowl Squares page.
The 10 by 10 grid is not arbitrary. It exists because there are exactly 10 possible last digits for any score: 0 through 9. With one team on the rows and one team on the columns, you get 10 times 10, which equals 100 unique combinations. That is a perfect number for a group game because it is large enough to involve a lot of people but small enough to feel manageable.
The last-digit system also creates an interesting property: many different scores map to the same square. A score of 7-0 has the same last digits as 17-10, 27-20, or 37-30. This means the winning square can change multiple times during a quarter as teams score, adding drama throughout the game rather than just at the end.
The random assignment of numbers is what keeps the game fair. If people could choose their own numbers, everyone would grab 0, 7, and 3 (the most common digits in football scores) and avoid 2, 5, and 9. By assigning numbers randomly after all squares are claimed, every square has an equal chance of being a winner at the time it is chosen. The randomness is not a flaw in the game. It is the whole point.
For most of its history, football squares was a completely analog experience. Someone in the office or in the family would take responsibility for running the game. They would draw the grid by hand on a large piece of paper, or sometimes print one out from a template. The grid would get taped to a wall in the break room, pinned to a bulletin board, or passed around the table at a party.
People would walk up and write their name in whichever squares they wanted. Once the grid was full, someone would write the numbers 0 through 9 on slips of paper, drop them in a hat, and draw them out one at a time to assign the rows and columns. It was low-tech, social, and part of the fun.
But paper grids had real limitations. You had to be physically present to claim a square. If someone worked in a different office or lived in another city, they were out of luck unless someone claimed a square on their behalf. Tracking scores during the game was manual, and figuring out the winner at the end of each quarter meant someone had to stop watching the game and check the grid. Mistakes happened. Disputes came up. And if the paper got lost or damaged, the whole game was gone.
The internet changed football squares the same way it changed everything else: by removing the barriers of distance and convenience. The first digital squares games were simple spreadsheets shared over email or through Google Sheets. They solved the remote participation problem but introduced new headaches. People would accidentally overwrite cells, formulas would break, and someone still had to manually update the scores.
Dedicated online platforms took it a step further. Instead of a spreadsheet, you get a purpose-built grid that handles everything: claiming squares, randomizing numbers, locking the board, tracking scores in real time, and automatically highlighting winners. The game itself has not changed at all. It is still the same 10 by 10 grid with the same rules. But the experience of running one is completely different. You can learn more about how it works on our How to Play page.
Digital platforms also made it possible to include people who are not in the room. A family member across the country can claim squares from their phone. A coworker who is working from home can participate just as easily as someone sitting in the office. The game is no longer limited by geography, which means the groups playing it are bigger and more spread out than ever before.
Although the game is called "football squares," the concept works for any sport with a numeric score. Over the years, people have adapted the grid for basketball, hockey, soccer, and more. The rules are identical. The only thing that changes is the sport being played and how the scoring periods are structured. On our platform, you can create squares for NFL, college football, NBA, college basketball, and NHL games.
Basketball squares have become especially popular during March Madness and the NBA Finals. Hockey squares work well because goals are relatively rare, which means the winning square does not change as frequently and the suspense builds. Even soccer, with its low-scoring nature, creates an interesting dynamic where the 0-0 square has a real chance of winning at the end of every period.
Some people have even taken the squares grid beyond sports entirely, using it for things like award shows, election nights, and other events where you can assign a numeric outcome. The format is flexible enough to work for almost anything, which speaks to how well-designed the original concept was.
Football squares has survived for over 50 years because it does something that very few games can do: it makes everyone at the party care about the game on TV. The person who has never watched a football game in their life is suddenly cheering for a field goal because it might land on their square. The coworker who does not follow sports at all is refreshing the grid on their phone during the fourth quarter.
It is also one of the few games that is genuinely fair. There is no skill involved, no advantage to being a sports expert, and no way to game the system. A first-time player has the exact same chance of winning as someone who has been playing for 20 years. That accessibility is a huge part of why the game keeps getting passed down from one generation to the next.
And at its core, football squares is really about the people, not the game. It is an excuse to get your office together, to include your out-of-town relatives in the Super Bowl party, or to make a random Thursday night football game feel like an event. The grid is just the mechanism. The real value is in the shared experience it creates.
Whether your office has been running the same squares game for 20 years or you are starting a brand new tradition with your family this season, the game is the same as it has always been. A grid, some names, random numbers, and a football game. The tools have gotten better, but the spirit of the game has not changed.
That is what makes football squares special. It is not complicated. It is not exclusive. It is just a fun, simple way to bring people together around a game. And as long as people keep watching football together, they will keep playing squares.