Here's a ridiculous segment by the usually-reliable Michael Smith on ESPN's Numbers Never Lie* in which he recites a series of absurd statistics about the Super Bowl (without citing where they got the information, of course).

There are about 315 million people in the United States according to the Census Bureau. Of these, 40 million are under the age of ten and thus mostly immune to Super Bowl gluttony. But everyone else, even in the infirm, is counted. So according to ESPN, the average American is going to do the following Sunday:

* Spend $0.18 on food
* Eat two ounces of tortilla chips
* Eat 0.5 ounces of guacamole with those chips
* Eat 4.5 chicken wings
* Consume half a slice of pizza
* Drink 12.6 cans of beer

Could you imagine how awesome/terrible this country would be if every single one of us drank an entire 12-pack? I don't doubt lots of people will actually do this, but everybody? Also, attention vegetarians: get chowing on those wings, hippies. And kudos to anyone scoring that kind of grub with 18 cents. I can't even buy a gumball for that much anymore.

I'm not aware of when Numbers Never Lie* just started making shit up—maybe that's a subtext of the show on which I never picked up—and certainly the bullshit numbers came from somewhere other than ESPN's research department. But they've never been too good at citing their sources. [ESPN2]

h/t to JF