All the (White) Smoke
The Cardinals are in town. No, not Albert Pujols or Kyler Murray, the *other* Cardinals. And we've got data.
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we talk about the world’s greatest non-sports sporting event.
Eben: I was sitting at my Bloomberg desk in March 2013 when Scott Soshnick (now Sportico’s editor-in-chief) came to me with an idea. The Cardinals were in conclave to pick Pope Benedict XVI’s successor, and one of the frontrunners was an Archbishop named Angelo Scola. Scola’s son, Scott told me, was Luis Scola, the 6-foot-9 power forward on the Phoenix Suns. Scott suggested I call the team to see if Luis would comment on his dad’s candidacy.
Wow, I thought, I didn’t realize there was a sports connection! Eager to please, I grabbed my NBA directory, looked up the phone number for the Suns media team and started dialing. It was still ringing when Scott hurried over and told me to hang up the phone. “Stop!” he said, laughing. “Cardinals don’t have kids.”
We still chuckle about it to this day. He says it showed my lack of critical thinking; I say it showed my willingness as a young reporter. Either way, I’ve been thinking about it this week as the Cardinals gather once again in the Vatican to select a new pope.1 The conclave isn’t a sports competition, but it’s not not a sports competition. The NFL and MLB also have Cardinals, and college sports loves a good ranking. The CFP selection committee is just a conclave, with somehow less diversity, older men and more scrutinized outcomes.2
So as we celebrate the announcement of the first American Pope, Leo XIV (AKA Robert Francis Prevost), we’re turning this week over to Lev, who has the content you didn’t know you needed—Conclave DataViz!
Lev’s Viz 📊: The 2025 conclave started yesterday, and… we’re already done??? Just as social media and groupthink have sucked a lot of the fun out of end-of-season awards voting in sports, that seems to be exactly what the invention of the telegraph (late 1830s) did for the papal conclave?
The election of Benedict XIV in 1740 was an all-timer, but we just don’t get conclaves like that anymore. The 1830 conclave lasted 51 days. Every conclave since 1846 has lasted five or fewer days.
Anyway, a lot has changed about the college of cardinals since the 19th Century. For one, it’s gotten way more diverse. Just 100 years ago, every cardinal was from Europe and nearly half of them were from Italy. In 2025, there are 28% from the Americas, 20% from the Asia-Pacific region, and 13% from Africa.
Pope Francis is largely responsible for that. Only 40% of the new cardinals he created are from Europe, whereas every one of his predecessors exceeded 55% in that regard. It wasn’t until Pius XII (1939-1958) that a significant share of new cardinals created were from other continents.
Only cardinals who are under 80 years old can vote in the conclave, so a lot of the cardinals appointed by Benedict XVI and John Paul II aged out by 2025.
Francis’s advanced stats were also off the charts.
The result is that Francis appointed 80% of the cardinals who chose his successor. That's high, but not an outlier. John Paul II, whose pontificate lasted 27 years, appointed 98% of the cardinals who voted for his successor.
To finish off, here’s an incredible post of leading NBA scorers by pontificate. For some fun trivia, you can try to guess the NFL passing yards leaders (answers below).3
Jacob’s ⚡ Take: NFL Draft in Vatican City when?
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.
And who knows, if there was an NBA player named Luis Pizzaballa, maybe I would run it back on one of my younger colleagues…
Archbishops would have put undefeated Florida State into the playoff in 2023, I am sure of it.
