Here’s how we generally know what kind of day it has been: if we’re driving home from work and Barreiro is still on KFAN, life is pretty good. It means we’ve at least managed to leave the office before 7, the night is still young. The world is our oyster. If Sludge and Lake are on, however, we have problems. Sure, we’re not driving when everyone else is driving. But it probably means it’s been a long day, and the inevitable exhaustion at home is going to take over sooner rather than later. Last night was a Sludge and Lake night. It’s not our favorite ‘FAN program, but it’s hardly our least favorite. The lads have a good time, and they’re clearly getting better at what they do. They also had a caller last night who posed an interesting question: Why not charge receivers with interceptions instead of quarterbacks on plays in which it was clearly the receiver’s fault (for example, the ball bounced off their hands and was then picked off)? While this would clearly open up a rather subjective can of worms, it does make one think about the nature of statistics in general.

How many of a QB’s interceptions aren’t his fault? Wouldn’t you love to see a statistic on receivers that listed the number of interceptions that were their fault? Really, it would be a pretty important number. And there are so many more examples that fall into roughly the same category. Now, as someone who used to compile team-by-team statistics when he was 7 years old by reading the backs of baseball cards (pen and paper, folks. It was a little obsessive), we’ve always loved the quick information one can get from comparing numbers. But statistics are compiled during the fast-paced flow of games — a relative blink of an eye — and then they sit for an eternity. They don’t tell you the story of why, just the story of what — and even that is inaccurate in some cases. While it’s true that some sports (baseball at the forefront) have forged ahead with new categories that at least attempt to get at a more meaningful truth, at the end of the day there are some stats that are just plain misleading. Plus-minus in hockey affects players who might be 150 feet from the play or might have just stepped onto the ice. The RBI in baseball is often a product of luck and surroundings more than anything else. Even something simple like a TD pass for a quarterback is part-skill, part offensive philosophy (see Peyton Manning, 2004). We’re curious: What do you consider the most meaningless or misleading of all the sports statistics? Also, if you know of a way to stop the Spammer from sending the “Do You Love Scrabble?” e-mails to us, that would be great. Yes we love Scrabble. But we’re not allowed to play it anymore. Stop tempting us! Oh, and Peter Forsberg. [Redacted].

Fasola-link! Probably one of just a few hundred commercials ever made that featured former Bengals QB Ken Anderson, Cicely Tyson and the dearly missed Kurt Vonnegut Jr. This is simply awesome. Be a coffee achiever!

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