OK, I know the entire premise of BTTF is goofy, physics-wise. I won't get into the time travel logic. What I DO want to mention, though is that, for being an almanac showing 50 years of sports scores, that book is ***AWFULLY SMALL***. Here's my reasoning:

I assume that all regular season and post-season scores would be shown for professional sports such as Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Basketball Association, and National Hockey League. In addition, all College Division I games would be listed as well. Finally, from the Grays Sports Almanac cover page, boxing and horse racing is included.

That would mean that a book that looks about the size of a large Dell Crossword magazine, about 150 pages at 8.5 x 11 inches, would contain the scores of over 160,000 baseball games, 44,000 NFL Games, 87,000 NBA games, and 76,000 hockey games, professional level. In addition, as mentioned in the movie, colleges are included, so I estimated a very conservative 75 Division I colleges who play 12 games apiece per year, not including bowl games, for another 45,000 games. If you throw college basketball in the mix, include at LEAST 90,000 games, including playoffs and tournament games. By the way, although the calculations are rough, they ARE very conservative as I used the amount of teams in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000, as well as the length of seasons, to create my calculations.

Without boxing and hockey, we are looking at an almanac that lists over a conservatively estimated HALF A MILLION sporting events. With formatting and the smallest print for such an almanac, the book would have to be at LEAST 5,000 pages long, not the 150 shown.

First of all, welcome to the board Serious Excrement! I like your user name. :lol:

Anyway, I agree that this is a goof. There is no way all those sports scores from all those sports over fifty years could fit in such a small book. Maybe it would have made more sense if they only used playoff/championship games. I guess the creators decided that it was just easier to have an almanac with all sports scores and to have it be compact so that you could fit it in your pocket instead of having Marty or Biff carrying a huge book around! This is just one of those things, like the idea of time travel, that we have to suspend our disbelief on in order to enjoy the movie. That said I did enjoy reading your calculations, you did a good job on that. :)

What is ironic about this whole thing, though, is that the almanac is much larger in an earlier script on BTTF2 - the one where Marty and Doc go back to 1967. I'm guessing that the size of the almanac may have been reduced - because, after the Bobs decided to have Doc and Marty return to 1955 instead, the smaller almanac would much much easier to handle. I mean, can you imagine Biff carrying such a huge book with him wherever he goes? The almanac had a much more minor role in the 1967 script, as Marty was pretty much able to grab the almanac away almost immediately - and the conflict of film focused more on Marty disrupting his conception once again, when Lorraine used the money that she planned for her trip with her husband to bail Marty out of jail (as he was accused of being a draft resister).

That script can be found here.

Maybe there aren't big spaces between the line, with a small font and no pictures and stuff...i dunno...

Yeah, maybe it's in really small print.

BTW, I really love your avatar! I really love that lopsided smile? Do you have a bigger image of that? :)

Nope...only this one... :)

Here's a larger version of my avatar. He looks so huggably soft! :)



Was able to get a screencap from a video at YouTube:

Perhaps there aren't, and of course this is just a plot device. But keep in mind that Biff referred to Grays while he was driving in a convertible, listening to the scores on the radio, so the print would have had to be at least the size of normal find print, typically around 6 point pica or ariel font. At that size, with no spaces or even minimal formatting headers (such as "NFL 1978 Scores"), just scores (like "LA 17 OAK 14", for instance), you could CONCEIVABLY include just the professional sports scores. But adding college to the mix will not wash.

I am actually consolidating all the major sports historical scores for a massive database for use for my sports betting website, so in another few weeks I'll have realistic estimates to how large the almanac would be at various fonts and formats.

As per tiny font, I'm actually thinking of creating a Gray's sports almanac with such tiny font, even paying for a license to use the actual cover, to sell as a novelty item. Of course, I would include a very powerful magnifying glass with each order. :P

I believe it is in the commentary that Bob Gale admits the book is far too small, but they needed it to be that size so Biff could put it in his pocket and be able to walk around with it.

Plus if 2015 Biff gave 1955 Biff a huge, 5,000 page book, I'd think 1955 Biff would probably put it straight in the rubbish bin! ;)

Maybe if they had limited the book to one or two sports, say football or baseball, it would have been a bit more believeable.