NFL Power Rankings top ESPN.com searches in October
ESPN.com ranks the top searches of October 2008.
Top Search of the Month: NFL Power Rankings
Our weekly NFL Power Rankings were tops in search during a month that was chock full of upsets, injuries and surprise benchings in the NFL. The top two spots remained occupied by the Giants and Titans throughout all of October -- the only change coming when both teams traded spots after the Giants' loss to the Browns. However, spots Nos. 3-32 have been about as volatile as the Dow Jones Industrial in recent weeks, prompting a massive number of searches and lively user comments, which counted more than 9,000 at time of this writing.
Quick Hits
- No. 6 Lil Wayne: Not only has the popular New Orleans rapper been at the top of the Billboard charts, appeared on "Saturday Night Live" and in the new LeBron James commercial, he's also been a top search due to his new sports blog for ESPN the Magazine.
- No. 8 Heisman: Even though 2007 Heisman winner (and current candidate) Tim Tebow's vote is for front-runner Colt McCoy, there have been plenty of players (Graham Harrell, Sam Bradford, Knowshon Moreno and Javon Ringer to name a few) making the Heisman trophy race a lot tighter.
- No. 15 Kimbo Slice: Kimbo received plenty of searches in October but it wasn't a good month for MMA organization EliteXC or its top draw as both were shut down rather quickly: The EliteXC folded in the wake of its bankruptcy filing and Slice was KO'd in 14 seconds by relative unknown Seth Petruzelli.
- No. 21 E:60: With features ranging from stories about paradoxical NHL tough guy Sean Avery to Carlos Boozer and his wife's struggles to save their son from sickle-cell disease, there were plenty of searches for E:60 throughout October.
- No. 25 Roy Williams: Both a popular and common name in sports, but during the month of October this particular search was for the outstanding wide receiver -- as opposed to the hoops coach or the hard-hitting safety -- after the Cowboys pulled off a surprising trade at the deadline to pluck Williams from the Lions.
Surprise Search of the Month: Shonn Greene
The Heisman race has been competitive this season. Iowa running back Shonn Greene was already having a great season, but he propelled himself into the running for the Heisman -- not to mention college football fans' collective consciousness -- after an amazing 217-yard, four-TD performance to help Iowa defeat Wisconsin. Greene easily became October's surprise search with more than 1,900 searches after receiving none throughout September.
The Complete Top 25
|
1. NFL Power Rankings 2. NFL Expert Picks 3. Notre Dame 4. Pontiac (Game Changing Performance) 5. TMQ 6. Lil Wayne 7. Penn State 8. Heisman |
9. PTI 10. Streak (for the Ca$h) 11. BYU 12. Michigan 13. Fantasy Football 14. Interactive (Tuesday) 15. Kimbo Slice 16. Alabama 17. Bottom 10 | 18. Auburn |
Check out the new ESPN Search Index for all the latest sports buzz in search, including the top daily searches, surprises and movers.
Maalek Marshall is ESPN.com's search editor.
Note: The results listed are the summation of actual search results that were manually typed in by site users of ESPN.com in said month of 2008. All prelinked searches (including columnist archive links) were excluded from this summation.

