Ten Facts that Might Be Wrong: Part 4 (and last)

Last one people. Promise because, well, fish barrel shoot.

If you missed the scintillating pre-quels, click here (links to the two posts prior are up top in that post). And set aside some time as they got a little wordy. The original article is here.

Again, I am reluctant to reward shoddy journalism with more clicks, but eh, if it leads to Ric being more thorough in the future, then maybe some good might come from it.

Anyway, "fact" number seven has buried in its 204 words—and that's one long ass fact—this little bit of tid (emphasis his).

Do you know that the TWO most-attended sporting events EVER HELD at Reliant Stadium in Houston are USA-MEXICO friendly matches - matches held in the middle of the week (Wednesdays) with no official importance of any kind ?

Why no, I didn't know that. And there's probably a good reason for that.

It's because they aren't the two most attended events at Reliant Stadium. The stadium hosted a Super Bowl. Number XXXVIII to be exact. That was the one where Panther's coach John Fox went chasing after a missed extra point by continually going for two. But by failing continually, he gave the Patriots a chance to kick a game-winning field goal and the whistle.

And let me give all "throwball" coaches some free advice. Never even consider, bother, worry, or think about going for 2 until there are less than 4 minutes to go in the game. There, I just saved someone's job.

Back to the issue at hand. The attendance for the Super Bowl at Reliant was 71,525.

The attendance for the February 6, 2008 US v Mexico friendly was 70,103. And the attendance for the May 8, 2003 friendly was 69,582.

So for those that might need a little help:

71,525 > 70,103 > 69,582 OR Super Bowl > US v. Mexico II > US v. Mexico I

Now the 70,103 was the 2nd largest soccer crowd in US history. That's pretty good, although I imagine that's for a US soccer match, not just any soccer match as the US hosted a World Cup back in 1994 and pretty much every match at Stanford Stadium and Giants Stadium outdrew 70,000.

But really of all the errors with the original post, this is the least explicable or excusable. It took about 90 seconds to find the three attendance numbers here. Just proclaiming something it bold doesn't make it true. It makes you seem like Skip Bayless. Honest mistakes are sometimes excusable, being Bayless-esque isn't.