Since this is sort of related to last night's Bucs-Giants game, I would have posted this in the '11/23 and 11/24 Games' thread, but from the lack of response after posting a comment about Jim Rome's take on the '72 Dolphins under the '11/16 and 11/17 Games', it appears thread titles with dates on them get quickly buried as soon as those dates pass.

Anyway, to get to the point...during last night's game, John Madden and Al Michaels provided the viewers with some 'information' which I think is so obscure and trivial that it makes a parody out of the profession of statistics-keeping. For example, do any of you really care that on Nov 9/03 the New York Giants became the first non-expansion team since 1949 to lose at home by 20 or more points to a team with a 1-7 record or worse? After I digested exactly what vital information was being conveyed to me, I was of course eager to know which expansion team yadda-yadda was the first to lose on the road yadda-yadda. Or, in another recent game, the Giants became only the second team in the last 70 years to lose a game on a punt return touchdown in the last two minutes of the 4th quarter Really?! As opposed to losing on a similar play in the last three minutes of the 4th quarter? There were several other examples of manipulating information to make it sound important, but I won't bore you with the details.

Of course, this is not unique to last night's game, I've often heard announcers spout meaningless (at least to me) drivel about such earth-shattering 'statistics' during other games.

Don't get me wrong, stats do indeed have a useful place in football and other sports. Many in fact I do find interesting, ie the ones that matter, such as all-time passing yardage, QB sacks, etc. But I'm sure I'm not the only one whose eyes glaze over when exposed to such ridiculous 'statistics' like those mentioned above.

I find it very funny (and pointless) when announcers tell us that Team A holds a 10-3 lead in head-to-head meetings. This is especially useless when one team is an AFC team and the other is from the NFC as they only play once every 4 years. In this day of free agency, these teams are very different from year to year.

A lot of the stats we get on Monday night are terrific, but there are some clunkers. My favorite in the latter category: When NE took that intentional safety against Denver, MNF told us it was the first time a team trailing took an intentional safety in the fourth quarter and won the game. They never told us how many times a team took an intentional safety and lost. Or how many times in history teams have taken intentional safeties, period. Intentional safeties are so rare that their stat was pretty useless.

Useless stats aren't exclusive to football. You can find them in every sport. At least some of it has to do with betting and fantasy leagues.