AP

On a day that's supposed to be quite rough, it's my job to provide CNBC watchers with both levity and relevance. And that takes me to the Super Bowl Indicator. As many of you know, the Indicator says that when a team from the original NFL wins, the market will go up.

When a team from the former AFL wins, the market will go down. For the past two years, we've had both teams hailing from the original NFL, but in the Giants (NFL) and the Patriots (AFL), the Indicator--which has been right more than 80 percent of the time--has a chance again. So it comes as no surprise that Wall Street is rooting for the Giants, not only because they hail from New York, but because the Indicator says it will be a good year on the Street.

Inspired by a post sent to me by reader Jordi Scrubbings I decided to break down the years these two teams have won and what happened to the Dow that year. With many predicting a recession, it looks like the Indicator will be right again if the oddsmakers are right in calling for a Patriots win.

If we believe solely in the Super Bowl Indicator, which we of course do not, there's a 16-point swing in the Dow on the line. Through to this morning's open, the Dow is already down 8.7 percent in 2008.

New York Giants:
1987 -- Open: 1,897.36, Close: 1938.83 -- Yearly Pct. Change: +2.1 percent
1991 -- Open: 2,633.66, Close: 3,168.83 -- Yearly Pct. Change: +20.3 percent

Avg. Pct. Change in Dow when Giants win Super Bowl: +11.2 percent

New England Patriots:
2002 -- Open: 10,021.71, Close: 8,341.63 -- Year Pct. Change: -16.8 percent
2004 -- Open: 10,452.74, Close: 10,783.01 -- Year Pct. Change: +3.16 percent
2005 -- Open: 10,783.75, Close: 10,717.50 -- Year Pct. Change: -.6 percent

Avg. Pct. Change in Dow when Patriots win Super Bowl: -4.81 percent

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