Once the wedding wound down, Frohardt-Lane and a large group of friends and relatives rushed to the nearest bar. It had a couple of small televisions showing the hometown Bears game. When that ended, the network cut to the San Francisco 49ers-Arizona Cardinals matchup. Frohardt-Lane had picked the 49ers; Ebn Ozn had the Cardinals at +1. Whoever was right would win the entire SuperContest. The game was tied 20-20, and there were only 29 seconds left to play.

The Cardinals kicked off. LaMichael James fielded the ball for the 49ers and ran it back 41 yards — then appeared to fumble when he was tackled. “I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that this game could be lost in the next minute,” Frohardt-Lane said. When the officials ruled that James was down before the ball came loose, Frohardt-Lane’s emotions swung again. “Instead of being an unexpected opportunity to lose, it was an unexpected opportunity to win,” he said.

The 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, then completed two long passes, bringing the ball to the Cardinals’ 22-yard line. With two seconds left on the clock, Phil Dawson lined up to kick a 40-yard field goal, which was in “extremely makable range,” Frohardt-Lane said. But it wasn’t a lock. As Frohardt-Lane knew, Dawson had missed 26 percent of his field goals in the 40-to-49-yard range in his career. Frohardt-Lane felt calm nonetheless. He sensed what was going to happen before Dawson’s foot even struck the ball. “He drilled it,” Frohardt-Lane said. “It was never in doubt. It was about the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” The 49ers prevailed 23-20, and Frohardt-Lane won $557,850.

When I spoke with him by phone several days later, Frohardt-Lane ducked every opportunity to brag. To win the SuperContest, you needed to be more lucky than good, he kept saying. He reckoned that his computer-aided system would never be more than about 53 percent to 55 percent accurate over the long term, so he had been extremely fortunate to nail 68 percent of his selections during the contest. He planned to give half of his prize money to charity. I asked him if anything in his life had changed since winning. He told me that within minutes of the 49ers’ victory, his phone overflowed with text messages. Football bettors all over the country wanted to be his best friend. By the end of the day, he had hundreds of new Twitter followers. Several hundred more piled on in the next few weeks, and Frohardt-Lane fielded emails and phone calls from journalists and advice-seeking gamblers. The N.F.L. postseason was underway, and the members of his burgeoning flock wanted to know which teams they should pick.

The Super Bowl was a tough call, he told me. “This is the best matchup we have had in a long time,” he said. “Denver has by far the highest-scoring offense, and Seattle has the best defense in terms of points allowed per game.” His computer model calculated Denver as a very slight favorite at -1, but that was before Frohardt-Lane made his fine-tuned adjustments. Denver had lost several defensive starters to injuries. The game would most likely take place in cold weather, which tended to be harder on a pass-heavy team like the Broncos. And while Denver had a league-leading throwing game, Seattle’s defense was better suited than any other in the league to keep it in check, Frohardt-Lane said. After the adjustments, he believed that Seattle should be the true favorite at -1.5. “If the Vegas line is Denver -2, I think that Seattle is the smartest side to bet on.”

That was what Frohardt-Lane’s head told him, at any rate. But as a football fan, one who had always rooted for Peyton Manning, his heart was with the Broncos. He planned to make only a few Super Bowl wagers with friends and thought he could excuse himself for ignoring his contest-winning analytics just this once. “After the season that I’ve had,” he said, “I have earned the right to just pick the team that I like.”