Bristolmetrics: The Best SportsCenter Of 2012

This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week.

Total time: 480.5 minutes Time (minus commercials): 364.25

TIME DEVOTED TO INDIVIDUAL SPORTS NFL: 200.25 minutes (55%) (last week: 40.8%) MLB: 58 (15.9%) (last week: 25.1%) College football: 46 (12.6%) (last week: 10.5%) SportsCenter staples*: 43.5 (11.9%) (last week: 11.5%) Golf: 10 (2.8%) (last week: 2.4%) NASCAR: 5.5 (1.5%) (last week: 4.8%) Other sports: 1 (0.3%) (last week: 2.3%) NBA: 0 (0%) (last week: 1.5%) NHL: 0 (0%) (last week: 0.6%) College basketball: 0 (0%) (last week: 0.4%)

*-Includes things like the "Top 10," "Encore," "What 2 Watch 4," etc.

MOST-COVERED TEAMS BY SPORT Green Bay Packers (NFL): 76 (23.6%) Detroit Tigers (MLB): 9.5 (3%) USC Trojans (college football): 5.75 (1.8%)

MOST-MENTIONED SPORTS FIGURES Rather than break down the amount of time a specific athlete or figure was covered, we counted how frequently names were mentioned in the transcripts from the week. The 15 most-mentioned sports people for Sept. 21-27.

"Replacement officials": 63 Joe Flacco: 31 Miguel Cabrera: 31 Golden Tate: 29 Aaron Rodgers: 26 Greg Jennings: 24 Tiger Woods: 21 Jake Locker: 21 "Triple Crown": 19 Denard Robinson: 16 Russell Wilson: 15 Josh Hamilton: 13 Jeff Gordon: 12 Drew Brees: 12 Roger Goodell: 11

CUMULATIVE STATISTICS: Jan. 7-Sept. 27 Total time: 17,125.25 minutes Time (minus commercials): 12,877.55

NBA: 2,675 minutes (20.8%) MLB: 2,417.25 (18.8%) NFL: 2,316.25 (18%) SportsCenter staples: 1,788.75 (13.9%) Other: 1,591.75 (12.3%) College basketball: 1058.5 (8.2%) College football: 579 (4.5%) NHL: 450.75 (3.5%)

The Seattle Screwjob resulted in the best SportsCenter of 2012: Last Monday was the perfect intersection of ESPN's self-interest and the news of the moment. Typically, ESPN's Monday Night Football game flows into the 11 p.m. SportsCenter, turning the latter into a postgame show whether or not the game deserves one. Packers-Seahawks certainly did, and the result was very compelling television. The first 37 minutes—and 68.5 out of the show's 92.25 minutes in all—were spent figuring out just what the hell happened on Golden Tate's "touchdown" "catch." These weren't pre-packaged highlight chunks. ESPN was responding on the fly, and watching the analysis curdle into rage against the WWL's media partner—Steve Young seemed on the verge of tears—was something to behold.