For the love of statistics, for the love of digging deeper, and for the love of Brandon’s reaction, we have come up with yet another unscientific measurement: the Playoff Watching Index. Granted, this one is more visceral than the Meaningful Home Run Index, but it does still have a lofty goal: measuring just how devastated (or not) you are by the regular-season or playoff failure of the teams you root for. How does it work? Easy, friends. We can achieve the impossible here — answering the question and talking directly to the American people. The PWI simply takes the amount of playoff coverage you would watch in an average year for a given time period and measures it against the amount of coverage you watch after your team is eliminated. That first number goes first in the equation. So let’s say you estimate that normally you would attempt to watch 30 percent of all MLB playoff games. But because the Twins were thisclose to making it before falling short, you have only watched 15 percent of all playoff games this year (and booed the White Sox mightily during 75 percent of those, which is a tangential number quantified by a Spite Corollary, and frankly we just don’t have time to get into that right now). In that case, your PWI would be 15/30, also known as 0.5. For the Timberwolves last year, your PWI was likely 1 or close to it (not affected at all or minimally) because there was no chance they were going to make the playoffs. (Or perhaps your index is “undefined” because there is a zero percent chance of you watching the NBA playoffs in either case). When a team is bounced from the playoffs, you measure the PWI from the next playoff series on, not from the start of the playoffs. Care to try a few of your own calculations?

*2008 Twins.

*1998 Vikings.

*2003 Wild.

*2007 Gophers football.

*2007 Bears (jama only).

The point being this question: How much does your team losing affect your overall playoff viewing habits?

Fasola-link! Comics.

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