The Retort

The Sports Facts Corner

January 28th, 2011 by Cory Lovec For The Retort

• Before 1898, a touchdown in football was only worth four points, while a field goal was worth five!
• A Formula One car generates so much down-force that it can drive upside down on the roof of a tunnel.
• If a horse wins a race “hands down” it means the jockey never raised his whip during the race.
• The 2010 Seattle Seahawks became the only team in the Super Bowl Era to finish a complete season with a record below .500 and still make the playoffs (They also won their first game, in which they were the largest home underdog ever).
• On average, a pitch thrown by a Major League Baseball pitcher rotates 15 times before being hit.
• From a complete stop, a human is capable of outrunning a Formula One Racecar for about 30 feet!
• Pro Football Hall of Famer Otto Graham played a combined 10 years in the All American Football Conference and the National Football League; he went to the league championship game every season, winning seven out of 10.
• A 'face-off' in hockey was originally called a 'puck-off'.
• The fastest serve in a game of tennis was in 1963 by Michael Sangster. It was clocked at 154 miles per hour.
• A Chinese player has won the men’s World Championship 60% of the time since 1959; in the women’s competition, a Chinese player has won all but two of the World Championships since 1971.
• It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
• Sumo wrestlers have a life expectancy of 60 to 65 years, more than 10 years shorter than the average Japanese male.
• Around 600 B.C., a Greek athlete named Protiselaus threw a discus 152 feet from a standing position. That distance was not exceeded until over 2,500 years later when Clarence Houser threw a discus 155 feet in 1928.
• If the air conditioning at the Astrodome in Houston was turned off, it would rain inside the stadium due to the entrance of humid air.
• If a nine-inning baseball game lasts around two and a half hours, only around eight minutes of that time is action time.
• In 1921, J.E. Clair of the Acme Meat Packing Company was granted an NFL (known then as the American Professional Football Association) franchise. The franchise was known as the Acme Packers, and later became the Green Bay Packers.
• The NBA instituted the three-pointer before the 1979-80 season, an idea it “borrowed” from the ABA, which was becoming hugely popular (the ABA also had many “slam dunks”).
• The longest put in history was measured at 140 feet and two and 3/4 inches on the 18th hole at St. Andrews golf course it was shot by Bob Cook on October 1, 1976.
• The first year a formal ice hockey game was played on record was 1855 in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.