Please explain “snowball’s chance”, as in this: Kelly said there is “not a snowball’s chance that will happen”.

My comments:

Kelly doesn’t believe there’s any chance of “that” happening.

We don’t know what “that” is exactly, but we know, for certain, what “not a snowball’s chance” means.

And that means not a chance, not at all. Like, utterly impossible.

The full phrase is actually “not a snowball’s chance in hell”.

Not a snowball’s chance in hell? That sounds a little easier to understand, doesn’t it?

Yes, literally, it means not a chance of snowball not to melt in hell.

A snowball melts when temperature rises and hell is, well, where high temperature is.

Hell, of course, is where sinners and evil people are sent after death, according to various religions. They’re sent there to suffer – from primarily hellfire because there’s a perpetual fire burning.

Now, what chance does a snowball stand in hell of not melting?

Exactly. No chance. None.

This expression is American in origin, as PoemAnalysis.com explains:

“A snowball’s chance in hell” dates back to at least the 1880s. One of the earliest examples of the phrase being used comes from The Detroit Free Press. The quote, which was included in an article about the Republican National Convention, reads:

Mr. George C. Gorham, ex-Secretary of the Senate, who not long since remarked, with a good deal of vigor, that under the Hayes administration a Republican in the South had about “as much chance as a snowball in hell,” now supports Grant.

All right. Here are more recent media examples of “snowball’s chance” or “snowball’s chance in hell”:

1. “Air,” about the Nike-Michael Jordan marriage, is a pure pleasure from beginning to end. I’m still smiling and it’s been days since I saw it in a movie theater with a crowd who laughed and listened and held their breaths collectively. From the first moment when we’re introduced to Nike’s basketball scout, Sonny Vaccaro, stroking the egos of high school players, I knew this was a sure thing. Imagine my amazement when suddenly I recognized the site. It was the recreated gym of Bishop Gorman High School, a basketball powerhouse in Las Vegas, with the banners and uniforms proclaiming it the home of the Gaels. This would ordinarily go unnoticed by the vast majority of viewers, well, essentially everyone. Clearly, all you needed to know was that this was a high school gym populated by players and fans. Why did it matter to me? My husband had played on that team, a state champion, a few (well more than a few) years before the time frame of the film. Needless to say, I was already on the bandwagon.

It is a significant opening, not because of the school or the players, but because it’s Vegas, the gambling capital of the world. And Sonny is a gambler. Leaving the school, he immediately heads for the Strip and begins betting on the over/under of various players and teams. Returning later, he collects his vast winnings and ambles over to the craps table where he proceeds to piss it all away. He’s an unrivaled genius when it comes to sports. Gambling on whether a player or team will score higher or lower than the given odds required an absolute knowledge of team and player statistics, not just personal but against every conceivable opponent. There is some luck involved in “guessing” right, but with someone as skilled as Sonny, the odds are in his favor. Losing at the tables, and in rather short order, established that without that sports edge, he’s at the mercy of the house like everyone else. This scene establishes everything we need to know or will come to know about Sonny Vaccaro.

“Air” is the story of Nike, a powerhouse in the runner’s shoe market in 1984 and a never-got-started in basketball shoes. To call them an also-ran would be giving them more credit than they deserved. Phil Knight was a genius when it came to running shoes and the success of his company was a reflection of that. But basketball was a shoe of a different color. His small, really miniscule, basketball division was made up of marketing wiz Rob Strasser, a few suits and Sonny Vaccaro, a savant when it came to basketball who scouted high schoolers and had set up a very popular summer basketball camp. But Sonny, complaining to Howard White, Nike’s resident NBA expert, former player and athletic liaison, felt that the company would never be able to compete unless they could sign a major star. The amount in their budget was designed to pay for three shoe recruits, but anyone with real potential had either been signed by Adidas or Converse or refused to sign for the piddling amount being offered by Nike, a brand worn by no one recognizable in basketball.

Sonny was that unstoppable force coming up against an immovable object, Knight. Knight wouldn’t increase the budget of the basketball division and Sonny couldn’t find three worthwhile recruits to sign for that amount of money. Approaching Strasser with his idea of spending the total budget on one high-profile player was a dead end. Sonny was convinced that they had a chance of signing a future superstar and set about convincing Strasser and Knight that Michael Jordan, the third pick in that year’s draft, was the man. No, he had yet to play a game in the pros, but endless hours watching films of Jordan’s college games at North Carolina under Coach Dean Smith made him certain.