Steve Hirdt is the executive vice president of Elias Sports Bureau and the director of information for "Monday Night Football" — roles he has been in, respectively, since the 1970s and 1980s. He will be in Minneapolis on Monday for the Giants vs. Vikings game and chatted in advance with the Star Tribune's Michael Rand:
Q: What was it like during your early days at Elias?
A: The company was very small then. We were just starting to computerize what had been a pencil and paper operation. We had scrapbooks and things like that. Little by little we entered the data into the computers. At the time we were doing it, we didn't even know if this would be of any interest to people let alone value. It was not the industry then that it is now. There was not access to statistics in everyday life like there is today.
Q: Has it been interesting to see the widespread acceptance and use of statistics in recent years?
A: I've done this my whole life, and it's been interesting to see the development. There have been excesses along the way to be sure, but for the most part statistical information is now used by sports decisionmakers. It used to be that it wasn't used at all.
Q: The work you do for "Monday Night Football" — what does that look like?
A: I provide interesting information that even someone who watches every game of a particular team might not ever know. … A lot of the same information gets repeated on each telecast. My job is to try to find things that might not be as well known. I know particular things that Jon Gruden thinks are particularly important so I'll try to find some of those things. He's very interested in short-yardage situations, red zone statistics. He uses statistical data as well as any analyst I've worked with. He has a tremendous memory to retain the data.
Q: So most of the information is assembled ahead of time?
