Magic number (sports)
In certain sports, a magic number is used to indicate how close a front-running team is to clinching a division title and/or a playoff spot. It represents the total of additional wins by the front-running team or additional losses by the rival teams (or any combination of the two) after which it is mathematically impossible for the rival teams to capture the title in the remaining number of games (assuming some highly unlikely occurrence such as disqualification or expulsion from the competition or retroactive forfeiture of games does not occur).