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. Graphic by Jim Cooke.
When last we met, ESPN was making puns about Amar'e Stoudemire's fire-extinguisher injury and engaging in a gross cross-promotional circlejerk over The Avengers. What would this week bring?
Total time: 419.25 minutes
Time (minus commercials): 313
TIME DEVOTED TO INDIVIDUAL SPORTS
MLB: 93.25 minutes (29.8%) (last week: 29.1%)
NBA: 91.75 (29.3%) (last week: 33.5%)
SportsCenter staples (things like the "Top 10," "Encore," "What 2 Watch 4," etc.): 49.5 (15.8%) (last week: 14%)
NFL: 34.25 (10.5%) (last week: 17.8%)
NHL: 29.75 (9.5%) (last week: 7.8%)
Other sports: 10.5 (3.4%) (last week: 1.1%)
Golf: 5.5 (1.8%) (last week: 0.5%)
NASCAR: 5.25 (1.7%) (last week: 3.3%)
College basketball: 0.5 minutes (0.2%) (last week: 0%)
College football: 0.25 (0.1%) (last week: 0.3%)
MOST-COVERED TEAMS BY SPORT
Texas Rangers (MLB): 20.25 minutes (6.5%)
Boston Celtics (NBA): 17.25 (5.5%)
New York Rangers (NHL): 15.25 (4.9%)
New Orleans Saints (NFL): 3.5 (1%)
Tennessee Volunteers (women's college basketball): 0.5 (0.2%)
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 May 4-May 10:
Josh Hamilton: 52
LeBron James: 33
Rajon Rondo: 31
Carmelo Anthony: 29
Bryce Harper: 24
Paul Pierce: 24
Kobe Bryant: 23
Kevin Durant: 23
Dwyane Wade: 22
Alexander Ovechkin: 21
Albert Pujols: 21
Cole Hamels: 20
Derrick Rose: 19
Chris Davis: 18
Junior Seau: 16
CUMULATIVE STATISTICS: JAN. 7-MAY 3
Total time: 7,581.25 minutes
Time (minus commercials): 5384.5
NBA: 1,458.25 minutes (24.2%)
NFL: 1,080.5 (17.9%)
College basketball: 1035 (17.2%)
SportsCenter staples: 882.75 (14.7%)
MLB: 661.75 (11%)
Other: 465.25 (7.7%)
NHL: 310.25 (5.2%)
College football: 129.5 (2.2%)
Notes
ESPN says goodbye to the Knicks:The Knicks were 36-30. They had the sort of good-not-great year the Houston Rockets are always having. They were lucky not to get swept out of the playoffs. After the Heat eliminated them on Wednesday, SportsCenter said farewell with an overwrought, overscored, overedited three-minute-long montage of the Knicks' season. This was Bruckheimer doing a yogurt commercial.
Watch it, if you can bear it:
Meanwhile, the Utah Jazz got four minutes of SportsCenter airtime, total.
Hamboner: Thanks to his four home runs against the Orioles on Tuesday, Hamilton became the first baseball player in 2012 to get the most mentions in a given week; 15.25 of the 20.25 minutes of Texas Rangers coverage this week was focused on Hamilton alone.
Albert Pujols got 21 times more mentions last week than he has home runs: Pujols's first home run of the season, on May 6, got top billing during a Sunday edition of SportsCenter. It beat out a pretty compelling Knicks-Heat game.
Nearly half of SportsCenter's NFL coverage this week was devoted to concussions: More news about Junior Seau's death sparked an Outside The Lines investigation into former players' concussion lawsuits. The two reports, along with reports on Junior Seau and Cris Carter (who made news this week when he admitted he offered bounties to his teammates), totaled 16 minutes, almost half the NFL's total air time.