This has definitely been a season companies and organizations trying to convince us that they are in the right and the other guy is wrong. Now, if you live in Manhattan, and other places in New York City, the basketball you thought you had back from the strike is gone again. Madison Square Garden and Time Warner Cable are fighting to, depending on which side you are listening to, keep our cable prices low or keep our local sports on the air. Time Warner is attempting to pacify their customers by offering us NBA TV and NHL Center Ice for a month and telling us they are working on it. MSG has mostly just told us to switch companies. Unfortunately, New York is one of those city’s that does not give everyone that option. So, in this game of impression management, it seems likely that only Time Warner can leave a good impression.

The discussion has been all but put to bed on whether Eli Manning is an elite quarterback in Tom Brady’s class. Yet each time Eli completed a game, this season, his comments from the Michael Kay Show were again raised and either confirmed or questioned.

Despite all the controversy, this was truly  a question of class intervals. There are some who complain about statistical research, and its presentation, because you can make the data say whatever you want. While this is not entirely true, data can be manipulated to support a particular perspective. If Eli Manning was even just the tenth best quarterback in the league, you could have quarterback rating or attempts and completion data arranged so that Eli and Brady are in the same category. The space between them might be large, but data can be arranged so that they are in one grouping and there is at least one other grouping containing quarterbacks who rank lower than Eli.

As it turns out, the data probably does not need to be manipulated so drastically but, its important to understand that, even at the beginning of the season when the interview occurred, Eli wasn’t just speaking to speak. He truly could place himself at the top of the class.