Kicking Off, Finishing Up and Looking Back with the NFL, MLB and ESPN - The Problems
09/13/2004

The National Football League (NFL) kicked off its regular season last weekend. The usual statistics that tell us the number of yards a team gained are passing yards and rushing yards. Then, we need to factor in the penalty yards, since losing these yards have an impact on the net gain. If your favorite team had 213 rushing yards, 327 passing yards, and 8 penalties resulting in an average loss of 10 yards each, what was your team’s net gain?

Major League Baseball (MLB) is coming to the end of its regular season. The New York Yankees have the best record in baseball (at least at the time this was written!). The Yankees will play a total of 162 games. At this point, their record is 88-52 (88 wins and 52 losses). If they maintain the same winning percentage for the rest of the season, what would we expect their win-loss record to be for the remaining games? Round to the nearest whole number for both wins and losses.

ESPN is celebrating 25 years on the air! (And MATHCOUNTS has been very proud to contribute to the last two years with the airings of the 2003 and 2004 National Competitions!) Assuming that this span of 25 years had 7 leap years, what is the number of minutes in the 25-year span? Express your answer in scientific notation to 2 significant digits.