Mike Tomlin Said "Obviously" 322 Times In Press Conferences This Year

We've noticed that Mike Tomlin likes to say "obviously" a lot, but just how much is a lot? Andrew McGill of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has crunched the numbers for the last four years of Tomlin pressers, finding that "obviously" was the coach's 25th-most used word, trailing only essential pieces of vocab like "the" and "that".

What's most remarkable is the rate at which "obviously" has completely overwhelmed Tomlin's vocabulary. In 2010, the coach used the word seven times during press conferences, then 33 times in 2011, then 151 times in 2012. In 2013 he used "obviously" 322 times—over 20 "obviously"s per press conference.

Based on an extraordinarily simplistic analysis of these figures, we predict that Tomlin will say "obviously" around 430 times in 2014. McGill notes that the coach uses the word about twice as often after losing games, so it could very well be higher than that.

For data nerds out there, it's worth checking out Andrew's personal blog, where he walks you through the data collection and coding that made this count possible.

[ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]