Well a soccer-basher might say it's because in soccer, you don't score enough to keep statistics!
but I wont' go there. (I actually enjoyed watching it back when I could get Fox Sports World without paying an arm and a leg. Though I have to say, for an American Football fan, watching Newcastle run around in their black and white striped shirts was like watching an entire team full of referees.)
Anyway. Statistics. I don't know why such an obsession, especially in a moderately anti-intellectual society that regards too deep an interest in something like math to be somewhat abnormal, if not downright unAmerican and treasonous. But my favorite example is Monday Night Football. (In case you didn't know, one game a week is played on Monday night, and ABC, the network broadcasting these games, has been successful at hyping the Monday games as more of an Event(tm) than the traditional Sunday games.) They'll say stuff like, "That's the longest kick return for a touchdown ever made on Monday Night Football," or "He's just set a record for most sacks in a Monday Night Football game." Oh yeah, somebody may have had TWICE as many on a Sunday afternoon, but all that's important is the Monday games.
