I noted last week that September 27, the Saturday of the Nebraska v. Virginia Tech game, was our busiest day of the year so far, with 517 police dispatches. This past Saturday, October 4, is close behind, with 493. Win, lose, or get completely dismantled, I don't think it makes much difference. Game days are just plain busy. Alcohol-related events are a chief contributor.
There is, however, a lull in the action. Check over these two charts. You can click to enlarge them, but the hours of the day start at midnight, on the left. The first is the distribution of police dispatches on Saturdays during 2008, sans football game days. The second is the distribution last Saturday, Nebraska v. Missouri; a nationally televised game with an 8:00 PM kickoff.
As you can see, the radio becomes a bit more quiet as the populace becomes glued to the tube. I wonder if last night's presidential debates caused the same effect.
Last nights debate was nothing more than a pointing the finger parade. Obama did not have the piece of food or whatever it was on his lip as it was with the prior debate. Obama did, at one time, launch quite a chunk of saliva. It was not aimed at his opponet. Just one of those things that the camera catches when people are watching every move. I would guess this is why the audiance sits far away?
ReplyDelete"Win, lose, or get completely dismantled, I don't think it makes much difference. Game days are just plain busy."
ReplyDeleteI think you're right. Consider the Chicago Bulls. If the Bulls lose, they riot and burn cars in South Chicago. However, if the Bulls win, they riot and burn cars in South Chicago.
Regarding the other, did you see a similar dip in activity on 10/2 for the VP debate? That one got ~70m viewers, according to Nielsen et al.
I think we're talking about different sociological groups... so I'd say the debates aren't going to make much of a difference. I'm going to go ahead and stereotype here. Most of the people generating the police calls are too busy
ReplyDeletea)generating or b) reacting to
the drama in their own lives to be concerned about presidential/vice presidential politics.
It'll be down hill from the last game, chief. Their on a losing streak again and the so called fans are poor losers, so they'll start staying home and crying in their red beer. Won't be long now they'll be giving Bo a two million dollar check and sending him on his way. Go Big Red.
ReplyDeletewe still have volley-ball!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteGo Boise State!!!
ReplyDeleteI don't think things will slow down during the debates, but whether you are for McCain or Obama I think you'll agree the next debate should be done like this.
ReplyDeleteChief Casady:
ReplyDeleteI'm getting back into research mode so we should look at some of these relationships statistically and see if we can determine if we have more DV on game days as well as the relationship between crime incidents frequency and high rating television broadcasts. Both of those should be fairly easy to put the data together for. And I'm sure we could think of a few more.
Bruce Silva
Bruce-
ReplyDeleteThat's what our intern will be doing (see the next post). I've already done it for Christmas and Christmas Eve (DV is about half what it is on the same days of the week during the rest of the year). We'll see if the number of cases on game days is sufficient to reach statistical significance--if indeed there is a difference.