Meaningless Statistics

A little short on good material, that is until just now.  I'm thinking this one will probably be a quick on but it is one that every fan of a sporting event will probably agree with me on.  The ones that don't agree are probably knee deep in a fantasy football league in which they stand to win a lot of money.


I turned the channel over to the NFL Network.  I'm not one of those that will watch a two plus hours pre-game show for one game.  You read that correctly, the pre-game show started at 6pm EDT for an 8:20pm EDT kickoff.  But when I switched over to the channel the hosts were starting to make their case for their pick for the evening.  One of them had to point out that Jim Harbaugh is 4-0 as a head coach in the NFL after losing the previous week.  Is that really relevant   Some if the statistics that they come up with are so outrageous that it's getting a bit extreme.  I get talking about statistics that have meaning such as number of tackles for a loss but how important is it to know that a particular QB has the highest passer rating during the 10 minute down to the 5 minute mark in the second quarter when his team is behind on the second Tuesday in October when it occurs after his birthday.  How does that effect the game?  Can't they find something better to show?  Perhaps considering this is the NFL Network I shouldn't complain about that one.  However, it doesn't excuse the 4 hours of coverage found on ESPN on Sunday mornings.

This certainly isn't limited to just the NFL.  The company that Syracuse University has hired for coverage of the men's sports goes one step further.  For both football and basketball there is a two hour pre-game and a one hour post-game.  That means that for football the pre and post game coverage was about as long as the game itself.  And for basketball it is longer then the game itself!  And how about NASCAR?  I'm not really into it but one of my sons is.  I understand that these drivers are fine tuned to tweaks on a car but do we really need to know about it during the week?  There is a show that he watches every night of the week called Race Hub.  It is a one hour show that analyzes every little detail about what happened in the previous race then every little tweak that happens during practice followed by how the track is going to have minor changes due to the expected air temperature dropping by 1/10th of a degree during the course of the race.

I get that they are just doing it because people are willing to watch it which means advertisers will pay for it but come on!  But what I don't get is why there is such a need for this information outside of those actually involved in the event.  Is it that you don't have anything better to do?  Come on over, I've got plenty of yard work for you!