Patrick Burns for Deadspin watched 23,000 minutes of SportsCenter, keeping track of the specifics of what the show covered over the year, such as what teams, players, and player descriptions.
The graphic above, by my fellow Deadspinner Reuben Fischer-Baum, shows the correlation between winning percentage—or points, in the case of the possibly nonexistent NHL—and SportsCenter mentions for teams across the four major leagues.* Our focus here is on just what about a team attracted the attention of SportsCenter’s all-seeing eyebeams over the course of a normal season. Our conclusion is that there was a reasonably strong correlation between winning percentage and SportsCenter mentions. It was statistically significant for all leagues except the NHL.
Unfortunately, they did not track how many times commentator predictions were completely wrong.
“Unfortunately, they did not track how many times commentator predictions were completely wrong.”
Deadspin tracks commentator prediction pretty regularly in their “PunditTracker” feature: http://deadspin.com/tag/pundit-tracker
Oh nice, thanks. This might be some fun data to play with.
I feel like I can name the teams with the most mentions in each league…NFL, the Cowboys, NBA, the Lakers, MLB, the Yankees and NHL, the Red Wings. The only one that I don’t feel confident on is the NHL.
I would probably have guessed the same as you, but the original post shows that it’s the NFL Giants, the Heat, the Yankees and the Penguins.