Thursday, October 19, 2006

The dirty details

Evan's not the only one who's annoyed by Rodney Harrison's late hits. In a preseason poll, 23% of NFL players voted Rodney Harrison the dirtiest. I wonder who Rodney voted for? Not himself, obviously. Says Harrison,
All I can say is as many guys as say I'm a dirty player, just as many come up and tell me they admire how I play, the hard work, the commitment, the toughness. That's the pride you're looking for. I take pride in that.
Does that mean 23% of the league admires him for his toughness, too? I'm guessing no. I'm guessing he's as deluded about his image as he is about his play.

The Patriots safety leads the list by a wide margin. Joey Porter and Jon Runyan come in second, each with 6% of the 361 votes. Now, I have no idea how Sports Illustrated conducted the poll. But it's hard to argue with these results. Imagine we thought that Porter, Runyan, and Harrison were all equally dirty—say 12% each—and that this outcome was just a statistical anomaly. Then the statistics would say, "No! Not a chance!" Okay, there's a chance. But it's like one in a trillion (according to a chi-squared test treating all other votes as one bin). I don't think that's what happened.

No, the NFL players think Rodney Harrison plays dirty, just like Evan thinks.


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