King Kaufman has an interesting article on the derth of football blogs today at Salon.com. Both Edward Cossette and I were quoted in the piece. To be honest, I don't read much about football, so I don't know exactly why it hasn't caught on in the blogging world.

My guess is that most football writing centers around front office and locker room gossip. But that wouldn't make it much different from any other sport really. Statistics are not the lifeblood of football like they are in baseball.

"In football, statistics are a lot simpler, and mean less, because the situations are a lot more widely varied," says Sean Smith, whose Purgatory Online blog is about the Angels. What he means is that while baseball is built on a straightforward batter vs. pitcher competition, everything that happens on a football field is dependent on the performance of teammates and opponents. "Compared to football, it's easier to figure out which [baseball] statistics are meaningful," Smith says.

Considering how popular statistical analysis is in baseball, it's confusing why football hasn't attracted a similar audience. Kaufman opines:

Football, aside from being massively popular, seems ideal for the blogosphere. It's highly technical and complicated, yet it can also be followed and understood on a "Did you see that hit?!" level. It seems to me that brainy programmer types can appreciate the intricacies of strategy, blocking schemes, zone coverage and quarterback checkdowns at the same time that the, shall we say, less complicated among us can appreciate the game on a more foam-finger-in-the-air level.

The problem with football is that you only have games once a week. What are you going to write about: practice?