According to Google: How Homo(nym)phobic is Your Team’s Fanbase

One of the things that has happened in the wake of the Oakland Raiders relentless march toward competence is that I am paying a lot more attention to team-related coverage.  There are some folks out there doing some incredible work with analysis (GipsySafety on Reddit and Coach Ted over at Raiders Film Analysis are both brilliant) but when you sift through all the team-related news and commentary you can end up getting pretty frustrated with some of the, shall we say, less cultured opinions of your team’s fellow fans.  One thing about the internet in general that drives me crazy is the inability of people to use the correct form of a homonym (affect/effect, reign/rein, etc).  Since these mistakes are particularly prevalent in sports takes (hell, misusing homonyms is a big part of PFT Commenter’s schtick), I thought it would be interesting to take a look at which team’s fans are the worst (and best) at using the correct homonym forms.

My methodology was pretty straightforward: I took three common homonym mistakes that turn up fairly frequently in hot sports takes – “duel threat”, “complimentary back”, and “fair better”, did a Google search for each one associated with a particular team (sample search: Green Bay Packers “duel threat”), and tabulated the results.  To control things for teams that nobody is actually discussing (well hello there, Tennessee Titans!*) I counted the number of hits for the correct usage (Green Bay Packers “dual threat”) and calculated the percentage used incorrectly, then ranked the teams.  The team’s final rank was based on the sum of the three rankings.

And which team’s fans have the worst command of homonyms?  In a turn that will shock no one, it’s the New York Jets, followed closely by their local rivals, the Giants!  Which team’s fans were the best?  Turns out it’s the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Some statistical oddities – there was actually not a whole lot of variation for the population as a whole.  People were quite good at “duel threat” – with an average error rate of just 5.8%.  People were TERRIBLE at “complimentary back” (the phrase that actually inspired this work) with an average error rate of 36.7%.  “Fair better” was in the middle at 10.5%.  Buffalo had the most schizophrenic performance, ranking absolute last for “duel threat” but 2nd for “complimentary back”.  The Cowboys and Eagles did better than I expected, coming in at 13th and 21st, respectively.  And amazingly, the Oakland Raiders fans that have been driving me so crazy placed 6th overall.

The table below shows the basic results, and if you want to look at things in a bit more depth there’s a Google spreadsheet here.

*Curiously, based on my searches, the LEAST talked about team was actually the Arizona Cardinals.