TRUSTS CHOOCH IN A PINCH
NFL playoff doo-dads and sta-nicks picked up from scribbles in my margins and stolen from various places around the interent (specificall ESPN Stats & Info):
♦ Since 2007, Giants and Packers are 8-1 in road playoff games; the rest of the NFL is 13-28.
♦ Seven of the last 12 NFC title games have either been won by the Giants or lost by the Eagles.
♦ Three of the last five NFC title games have gone into overtime. Just one of the previous 27 had. By the way, only one AFC title game has ever gone into OT.
♦ The 2011 Giants (394-400) are the first Super Bowl team ever to be outscored during the regular season.
♦ Giants join the 1979 Rams and 2008 Cardinals as the only 9-7 teams to reach the Super Bowl.
♦ Teams with a minus-2 turnover differential (Patriots today) are now 3-46 in playoff games since 1970. The 1975 Steelers and 1981 49ers were the others.
Boop – who goes by Bob Vetrone Jr. when he is undercover or paying bills – has been at the Daily News since 1982, after working for five years at the Philadelphia Bulletin up to its closing. Along with helping to build the sports scoreboards most nights, he has had great input into the papers’ special sports pullouts – March Madness, Broad Street Run, Record Breakers, Greatest Moments – as well as its day-to-day, award-winning event coverage.
A 1980 graduate of North Catholic, he took some evening college courses. Those lasted right up until the first conflict with a Big 5 doubleheader.
His favorite books growing up were the NBA Guide and the Baseball Encyclopedia, which was, for all intents and purposes, the Internet before there was an Internet.
He has been immersed in sports statistics since the early 70s, when his father (long-time sports writer, broadcaster and the Daily News’ Buck The Bartender), would take him into the Bulletin newsroom overnight in the summer and let him update the Phillies statistics in a little, black spiral notebook. But things have changed tremendously in the decades since … He now uses a big, black spiral notebook. Email him at vetronb@phillynews.com.
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