It not being baseball season anymore, I figure I should write one obligatory football post. Don’t worry, though, I’ll probably still throw in a bunch of baseball references because that’s just the way I roll. In actuality, this post is more about announcers than football because most announcers in all sports are terrible. The issue at hand is: why the hell do Monday Night Football announcers treat Monday Night Football records like they actually mean something?
Everyone likes to that his or her moment is significant even when it’s an anomaly in a small sample size. Baseball (there it is) announcers love to do this. “David Eckstein is batting .415 with runners in scoring position and 2 outs after the 7th inning with a 2-2 count. I wouldn’t want anyone else up in this situation, and that includes A-Rod, Pujols, Babe Ruth, and God.” But the difference is, I don’t think anyone actually believes that that stat is in any way meaningful. On Monday Night Football, they keep their own stats that are separate from the games played on Sundays by the rest of the league, like there is some atmospheric condition that makes playing football on Monday an entirely different experience.
ESPN.com has a database of every MNF winner AND notes about those games. “Hey, basketball, I only care about who won every game played on Thursday’s in your history, so if you could get them to me… What? No! The rest of the games don’t matter. I just want to know who has the record for most rebounds on a Thursday.” It’s ridiculous to treat MNF like it’s special. It’s nice that the teams get to play a game without the distraction of other games, but that’s about it.
Does it really matter that Bo Jackson has the MNF rushing record of 221 yards when Adrian Peterson’s NFL record of 296 yards shatters that? Of course not. In fact, you could argue that single game records don’t really mean anything at all. Sure, some great players have set some of these records, but so have some mediocre players. To return to baseball, the list of players who have hit four homeruns in one game includes: Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, and Mike Schmidt. It also includes Mark Whiten, Shawn Green, and some guy named Pat Seerey. Does that mean all of these guys are of equal skill. I think we all understand that sustainable performance is what matters. So why does MNF insist on treating itself as separate from normal football operations? The same players don’t even play from week to week. It’s all just fun with small sample sizes, which, truth be told, isn’t really all that fun.
Before ESPN took over the broadcast of the Monday night games, it was usually the marque matchup of the week. They would usually schedule the big rivalry games and games that meant more to fall on Monday night. At that time, the game would usually be more important/harder for the team, so the stats did mean a little bit more. That said, I agree that most single game records are a bit bunk. If it's someone that repeatedly does big numbers doing way more then they've done before that's one thing, but any schmoe can have one great game.
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