According to a new study, 25% of Americans believe that Sunday’s result has already been decided by the good lord. But who is he (or she) rooting for?

The New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons are putting the final touches on their gameplans ahead of Super Bowl LI on Sunday, each team undoubtedly confident that if they give their all, execute and limit mistakes, they can come out victorious. Or, to go full football cliche: it’s anyone’s game, and the outcome will be decided on the field.

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That is one way to look at it. The other is that the game is already decided. Over. The champion is known. Not by Vegas bookies or in the NFL offices due to some secret Roger Goodell conspiracy to keep the Patriots off the trophy stage, but by an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-meddling and all-face-painted God. You know, Elohim. Allah. Yahweh. Krishna. The big guy (or girl).

According to a new study released by PRRI, a nonpartisan research organization, 25% of Americans reading this believe Patriots-Falcons is in the hands of the creator, the ultimate football executive. And while a quarter of the country believes God determines the outcome of games, a full 49% think devout athletes are rewarded for their faith via improved on-field performance. Among white evangelical Protestants, the Jesus-loving demo that voted in huge numbers for the debatably Christ-like Donald Trump in November, the numbers are even higher: 36% feel God picks the winner of games and 62% think the sports fan upstairs helps those athletes who rep him here on earth. To paraphrase Scripture: “Big, if true.”

“Americans overall seem to hold what might be called a ‘Providence Light’ theology when it comes to sports,” says PRRI’s CEO, Robert P Jones. “While half of Americans believe God may function as a kind of performance enhancer for religious athletes, only one-quarter believe God actually throws the game to one side or the other.”

Essentially, it sounds like if God has a preference, he’s into individual sports over team sports. So if you look at Serena Williams’s continued excellence compared with the track record of, say, the US men’s soccer team, God must like her Jehovah’s Witness faith over the mainstream Christianity practiced by the bulk of America. (Or Williams is just awesome at tennis of her own accord and the US soccer program continues to have deep, systemic problems that cause its struggles. Only your faith can answer this age-old question for you.)

As Jones says, God’s help on the field of play would indeed be the ultimate “performance enhancer”. Steroids increase an athlete’s power, but God is all-powerful. It’s not tough to figure which one is better. Yes, Lance Armstrong was cheating during all those years of Tour de France dominance, but if he was still able to beat some devout cyclists who were using the PED of G-O-D? That’s a huge achievement.

If God does help athletes win on the field, faith may be one of the last market inefficiencies to exploit in building a sports team. Billy Beane hasn’t won a championship using the Moneyball approach yet. Perhaps it’s time to try Godball, and replace all the statistical analysts in the front office with priests and theologians. On-base percentage is out. Church attendance percentage is in. It would also mean the big-time sports media have a huge blind spot towards matters of faith. The networks provide in-game analysis from officiating experts, even kicking experts now, but never once have I seen a game go split-screen to get real-time insight from a man of the cloth even though 49% of the viewing audience believes God is helping the athletes perform in real-time. The media is not serving the interests of its audience. I doubt 49% of viewers care about kicking, yet we’re still forced to listen to Jay Feely.

The toughest part in believing that God helps athletes of faith succeed is finding any evidence or detecting patterns in his or her rooting interests. Tim Tebow’s athletic career is a confusing case, for example. He managed to win one playoff game in the NFL, but then was crushed the very next week by the “evil empire” New England Patriots. A few years later he didn’t even make the Patriots roster, was soon out of the sport entirely and is now a fledgling minor league baseball player in the New York Mets organization. It’s hard to see where Tebow’s public support for God has earned him any athletic favors of late.

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Russell Wilson’s recent struggles provide even more doubt. The Seahawks quarterback famously credited God for giving Seattle a dramatic comeback win in the NFC title game two years ago. “That’s God setting it up, to make it so dramatic, so rewarding, so special,” a tearful Wilson said after time expired. Coming off a Super Bowl title the year before, it looked like with Wilson, Marshawn Lynch, Seattle’s fearsome defense and the help of He who created the heavens and the earth, the Seahawks would win every championship far into the future. But after pulling the strings for Wilson in that title tilt against the Packers, God seemingly hath forsaken him. Wilson’s very next game ended with an interception in the end zone to lose the Super Bowl, and the Seahawks have come up well short of the big game in the two years since. If that all is God’s doing, his ways are as mysterious as ever, especially after Wilson heeded his personal request to avoid fornicating with Ciara.

Yet there is no way to really know what is in a person’s heart, so it’s difficult to say who is and isn’t living in a way that pleases God, whatever God might be, and if he or she even bothers to watch sports via Celestial Sunday Ticket. Only an all-knowing God could know for sure. Perhaps Tebow’s soul is black and rotting, and Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft are actually saints who walk among us, and that’s why they are rewarded with frequent Super Bowl berths and the president of their choice. We can’t say. We can’t know. Faith, like thinking the Cleveland Browns will one day be competitive, is the evidence of things unseen.