Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Kurt Warner for the Hall of Fame

Now that the media has begun to get over the "shock" of the Arizona Cardinals odds-confirming trip to the Super Bowl, a lot of attention is being paid to Cards QB Kurt Warner. Now, media attention is nothing new for Warner. Nearly all football fans recall the many stories about Warner's inspiring rise from working as a stockboy at an indoor Christian football grocery store (or something like that--we're fuzzy on the details ourselves) to playing QB for the Super Bowl-winning St. Louis Rams. But this year's hype somehow manages to be even more over the top.

Specifically, many pundits have come out and said that if Warner leads Arizona to a win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, he would become a lock for the Hall Fame. This meme is fundamentally insane. In order to prove its insanity, however, we're going to have to veer into the scary land of numbers again. As we mentioned in our first meme post of the year, we are not great at math. In fact, we have to get naked in order to count to 21. But these numbers are pretty straightforward. In fact, they can be neatly summarized in a short topic sentence--watch:

Kurt Warner's Career Numbers Are Surprisingly Crappy.

There are lots of numbers which you could use to try to encapsulate a QB's performance. For season-to-season numbers, the DYAR stat at Football Outsiders is probably the best. But those numbers aren't available for most historic QBs, and for HoF purposes we need to compare Warner against everybody. So we propose to use three basic numbers, passing yards, TDs, and INTs as the basis, because those are the best conventional stats for measuring a QB's individual performance (all numbers taken from Pro Football Reference). How does Warner fare?

Passing Yards

Kurt Warner has thrown for 28,591 yards in his career. That looks pretty good at first glance. But it's only good for 38th place all-time, behind the likes of Rich Gannon, Jake Plummer, Donovan McNabb, and someone called Norm Snead, who sounds as though he ought to have played for the Pottstown Maroons. Does that sound like a list of HoF guys to you? And keep in mind that Warner's all-time ranking here is actually slightly inflated, given that he has played his entire career in the most passing-friendly age in NFL history. So put Warner in the HoF if you like. Just expect a hurt phone call from Jake Plummer the next day.

Touchdowns

Warner has thrown for 182 touchdowns in his career. That number ties him with Mark Brunell and Steve "Neckroll" Grogan for 40th place all-time.

Now, full disclosure: one of your authors here at the GRBG is a long-time Steve Grogan fan, and even had an autographed picture of Grogan on his fridge for a while. But there is no way, NO WAY that Steve Grogan should be in the Hall of Fame. 4oth place just isn't that impressive, especially when that place also manages to be behind Steve DeBerg. So it's hard to see how Warner's numbers in this category warrant anything other than a steady diet of post-career autograph sessions at memorabilia shows in the greater St. Louis area.

Interceptions

This is better for Warner, as he has thrown only 114 interceptions against his 182 touchdowns. The 114 picks put him 79th on the all-time list, which is good considering this is one list you don't want to be near the top of. So this category kicks Warner up a couple of notches. Still, though, it isn't nearly enough to overcome his profound mediocrity in the other two categories. The numbers don't lie. Warner just isn't good enough.

But, Wait, What About The Rings?

Yes, it's true that if Warner's team wins in Tampa, he will become just the 1oth quarterback to win more than one Super Bowl. But how much should that weigh into Warner's HoF case?

Of the nine previous multiple SB winning QBs, seven are in the Hall of Fame, one (Tom Brady) is still active, and one (Jim Plunkett) is, well, Jim Plunkett. Note also that Phil Simms is not in the HoF depite being the main QB on two Super Bowl-winning teams, even though Jeff Hostetler landed the plane for him one year in the Big Game itself.

So, although there is a tendency to put multiple winners in, there's also precedent for keeping them out when their numbers aren't up to snuff. We mean, can you imagine Trent Dilfer going into the HoF if Baltimore had repeated? Brad Johnson? Shoot, Eli Manning? Some pretty mediocre QBs have managed to win rings over the course of Warner's career. It isn't the unasssailable credential it once was. So let's all just relax and put down the gun when it comes to Warner's HoF chances. Kurt Warner should not be in the Hall of Fame.

This meme is a little hard to rate. On the one hand, it doesn't seem too bad, given that multiple rings is a strong indicator of Hall of Fame status. On the other hand, we have not heard a single media person cite any of the easily obtainable numbers we list above. That's a sure sign of a Super Bowl hype story--not letting the facts get in the way of an argument. For that reason, we give this one an 8 on the meme scale. Put down the pipe, fellas.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Anquan Boldin Is Sad and Unhappy

In the second half of last weekend's NFC Championship Game, Arizona Cardinals' receiver Anquan Boldin was seen getting into a snitting match with the team's offensive coordinator, Todd Haley, over Boldin's lack of playing time. Boldin subsequently left the team's locker room without speaking to reporters.

above: ooh, c'est triste, n'est-ce pas Anquan?

These two events have been the launching point for several days of discussion regarding Boldin's actions. Talking heads have mulled over whether Boldin's actions could mean trouble for Arizona in the Super Bowl.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Cards will need both Boldin and his fellow wide receiver Larry "The 12th Cylon" Fitzgerald at their best in order to break down a tough Pittsburgh defense. So if Boldin is either sulking or a distraction to the team, it could make the difference in the game. This meme has a certain surface appeal to it, as Boldin is a potentially important player, and as Terrell Owens has made it his life's mission to demonstrate, a wide receiver in high dudgeon can torpedo a team.

However, once you think about it for more than five seconds, there are three reasons (which sort of build on each other) why this meme makes no sense.

1. Anquan Boldin Is Not A Quitter

How can we here at the GRBG make that sort of blanket assertion when we, admittedly, haven't spent all that much face time with Boldin. Well, the fact is, ordinarily we wouldn't, as we prefer to leave unsupported blanket assertions to the professional media. But there is a pretty persuasive piece of evidence supporting our assumption here, namely that Boldin broke his whole motherloving face earlier this year, and came back to the team. And when we say broke his face, we mean broke his face--he apparently looked like a late November jack o'lantern when they carted him off the field at the Meadowlands earlier this year. The injury was so bad that it almost caused his quarterback, aged Christian armor bearer Kurt Warner, to retire.

So if getting his head staved in didn't cause Boldin to lay down, how can we expect that a lack of PT will do the trick? We're not dealing with Matt Leinart here, folks.

2. At The Super Bowl, Nobody Is A Quitter

Even assuming Boldin was the kind of guy who would lay down when miffed, who the hell sabotages a Super Bowl, either by sulking or intentionally causing a distraction? Even Owens, the human distraction machine, rose to the occasion in his lone Super Bowl appearance, helping the Eagles keep the game superficially close against the Patriots. All of the player "distractions" that have cropped up (like Eugene Robinson and his hooker) have had their roots in stupidity, not selfishness.

The only possible exception here was caused by a non-player, Bill Parcells, when he bailed out on the Patriots the week before the game. And if you'll give us a little bit of room for speculation here, we don't think Parcells has the same character as Boldin--if Parcells broke his face during the season, we don't think he'd make it back. Though if somebody want to run the experiment, that's fine by us.

above: sexy, kind of.

3. It Won't Affect The Outcome

Now assume that, somehow, both (1) and (2) above are wrong. Boldin is a big enough jerk to quit on his team, and decides to do so in the Super Bowl. What would happen?

Well, although you can't know for sure, we got a pretty good peek at what would happen last week in the NFC Championship Game. It's tough to imagine Boldin blowing up any more in the SB than he did in Phoenix, unless he kneecaps Steve Breaston or something. It's also tough to imagine him being much less of a factor in the SB than he was in the conference championship. But did his antics or lack of effectiveness affect the team in the NFCCG?

Not really. All they did was score 32 points on the number 3 defense in the NFL, win the game, and end the franchise's baffling losing streak.

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So there doesn't seem to be any real way that the Boldin story will affect the game itself. This is a perfect example of a Super Bowl hype meme: it sounds like it's about the game, but it's really about the media's own coverage. Once one person speculates about the effect Boldin might have, the rest of the gang jumps on board, instead of first deciding whether the theory actually makes any sense.

For that reason, we give this one an 8 on the meme scale. Hang on, all--it will only get dumber from here.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Arizona Cardinals Are In The Super Bowl !!1!THree

Ed. note: This marks the return of the GRBG's Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme; for details on the project, check out our previous introductions.

The sporting world's reaction to the Arizona Cardinals' Super Bowl berth has been marked by a fun combination of bafflement and condescension. The media has consistently treated the Cardinals like Red China, refusing to acknowledge their right to exist even as their power grew.

The New York Post had a typical take, likening the Cardinals' victory to a violation of the laws of physics:

The sentence that always connected "Arizona Cardinals" and "losers" now must be rewritten, or at least revised. The sun continues to rise in the east and the laws of gravity still apply but some absolutes are no more.

Heck, even Cardinals QB Kurt Warner has bought in, noting in his press conference that he "want[ed] to say Arizona Cardinals and Super Bowl in the same sentence", as though putting those two thoughts together in the past would have resulted in total protonic reversal.


at left: Warner, dressed for his offseason job as an evengelical exorcist.




The media is pimping this meme for two reasons. First, it gives them a chance to bloviate about the tradition gap between the Cardinals and their more august opponents, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Second, it lets them fill some time talking about the "historic" nature of the Cardinals' appearance in the big game.

But this meme has it all wrong. To the extent that the Cardinals have defied rational expectations, they've done it through their years of failure, rather than their month of success.

To show how, we at the GRBG will stoop to using math. This is ordinarily a dangerous path for us, as we last took a math class in 1995, and passed that class only through the grace of our TI-82 graphing calculator. Luckily, we think that the math in this instance tops off at simple division, so we feel good about our chances.

at right: our collective left brain.

We are now in year 43 of the Super Bowl era. This is the first time that the Cardinals have made the big game meaning they have gone 1 for 43 in Super Bowl appearances (See? Told you the math part would work out OK). There 16 teams in each NFL conference. Assuming, then, a completely random distribution of results, which the NFL's structure tries very hard to generate, a team should now expect to make a Super Bowl once every 16 years, on average. Historically, the odds were even more favorable, because there were fewer teams.

So how likely is it that the Cardinals would have made at least one Super Bowl in the 42 years before the '08-'09 season? The math gets ickier here, but our calculations (reproduced below for math dorks) figure that there was a 95.5% chance the Cardinals would have made the Super Bowl before now.

In other words, the remarkable thing here isn't that the Cardinals finally made it this year. It's that they somehow managed to f#$% it up for so long in the past. The press guys had 42 years to talk about how remarkable the Cards were, and you never heard a peep. But now that their results have finally started to become less remarkable, it's all that the media can do to keep from pitching over sideways in shock.

Because math was involved, we'll give this meme a 4 on our 10 point scale. But remember, every time you hear a story about how this Cardinals team is remarkable, know that it was the 42 previous teams that were the true standouts.

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Math time. We took a weighted average of the number of teams in a conference over the years, and found that it came out to about 14 (rounded for ease of usage). So the chances of a team winning at least once in 42 trials would be:

1 - ((13/14)^42) = .95571

Obviously there are some assumptions in here you could tweak, but for a back of the envelope job, we're OK with it. If you want real math, go to Football Outsiders. Poindexter.

Return of the Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme

It's once again the most wonderful time of the year, when sportswriters across this great nation converge on a single spot in order to spend 13 days analyzing a sixty-minute football game. A time when the 24-hour sports news machine begins to eat its own tail in a desperate bid for survival. A time when players are paraded out for a series of daily interviews so repetitive, one former Miami Dolphin likened them to going to the dentist every day to get the same tooth filled.

Yes, we've once again reached the traditional 13 day period between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.

These 13 days consistently produce the stupidest sports journalism of the year, simply because the length of the event overwhelms the typical sports journalism process. The process is ordinarily powered by talking heads taking ill-considered or insane positions on legitimate sporting topics in an effort to generate buzz. But that doesn't work for the Super Bowl, because there simply aren't 13 days worth of legitimate sporting topics surrounding one game. So instead the talking heads are forced to take ill-considered or insane positions on whatever meager shred of an idea they can come up with.

Thus are born Super Bowl hype memes, those bizarre talking points that seem to race through the media as desperately latch on to any passing idea that will let them kill the ten minutes until the next traffic report. We here at the GRBG have traditionally taken it upon ourselves to catalog and debunk these memes as they pop up, and this year will be no exception. Watch this space, as we drive ourselves crazy covering the coverage in a laudable attempt to shield you, the reading public, from the madness. Onwards.

Tuesday, January 20th: The Cardinals Defy Chance
Wednesday, January 21st: Anquan Boldin is Sad and Unhappy
Thursday, January 22nd: Kurt Warner for the HOF?