The team plays awfully after Tuesday lunchtime - a question of the usefulness of sports statistics

With how much I like politics, I'm kind of wondering why I don't pay more attention to sports. Not so much the actual sports themselves but the broadcasting and coverage thereof - sport coverage and political coverage have very similar tactics.

One of the main tactics I've recently noticed is the "inane statistics" tactic. In politics it almost makes sense, such as "sitting republican congressmen in heavily democratic constituencies tend to win due to name recognition" or "the bradley effect", and don't even get me started on polls which I, nor you, nor anyone you've ever met, have been involved with. But between last night's ALCS game six between Boston and Tampa and this afternoon's ass-whoopin' (if you'll forgive the term) of the Colts by the Packers, there's quite a bit of statistics going on.

For the baseball game there was nearly every batter's record against a right/left-handed pitcher (whichever it may have been), and when the pitchers changed, it would have the pitcher's record against Lefty/Righty batters. ESPN.com's live streaming, um, thing, had the likely winner for a long time before the end of the game, and the percent chance of said team winning. They also had percent chances of the batter hitting the ball into each area of the field.

I didn't think these statistics were inane per se until a few minutes ago when the CBS announcers for the Indy/Green Bay match commented on Indy being simply demolished by Green Bay by citing a statistic - Indianapolis haven't lost an October game since 2004.

Indianapolis have not lost a game that happened to take place in the month of October since 2004. Exactly what insight does this provide us about their playing in today's match? Is October the magic month in which Indianapolis can do no wrong, and this match could signal the end of a perfect October record? What's next, "Indianapolis haven't lost a game held on a Thursday since 1987"? Exactly WHAT RELEVANCE does this have to how they are playing today, apart from the fact that they are LOSING? Last I checked, people were more interested in such things as "Indianapolis haven't lost a game since October 2004", if they had a four-year winning streak that was about to break with this game. That frankly makes more sense than what was said.

But hey, I haven't seriously watched football in years now. I may have missed a shift in the fanbase where everyone started caring about the month, week, day of the week, and what time of day the match was held. I personally prefer the classic data: The weather, the location, injuries, and any sort of personal animosity between players on both teams (or fans of both teams). Those are the ones that I think actually have the possibility to affect the outcome of the game.

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