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The 1996 Brownlow Medal produced some amazing statistics as follows:
- There was an unprecedented three-way tie between James Hird (Essendon), Michael Voss (Brisbane Bears) and Corey McKernan (North Melbourne), all on 20 votes.
- Corey McKernan was unable to receive the award due to a suspension during the same season and remarkably had the same experience when he was ineligible to win the 1994 Rising Star Award due to suspension.
- The ineligibility of Corey McKernan was the first time this had happened in the history of the Brownlow Medal, but amazingly it happened again the following season when outright poll leader Chris Grant was ineligible to win the 1997 Brownlow due to suspension, and Robert Harvey from St Kilda was awarded the Brownlow for that year but the situation of an ineligible player topping the vote count has not come up again in nearly 30 years since.
- Had McKernan not been suspended and been eligible to receive the medal he would have been the first North Melbourne player to win in 13-years after Ross Glendinning in 1983. In all the years since then North have not produced a Brownlow Medalist, giving the Kangaroos a 42-year Brownlow drought coming into this season, the longest current drought in the AFL.
- The merger between Fitzroy and the Brisbane Bears after the 1996 season ensured that Michael Voss's win that year would be the first and only time a Bears player would win this award.
- Essendon had always had a good record in Brownlow Medals, and James Hird's 1996 win just three years after the last one in 1993. Following Hird's 1996 Brownlow however 16 years would go by before another Essendon player - Jobe Watson - would win the award in 2012, by which time Hird was Essendon coach.
- Following the supplements scandal which rocked Essendon in the mid 2010s, Jobe Watson was stripped of the 2012 Brownlow following the 2016 season and the award was given retrospectively to joint runners up Trent Cotchin from Richmond and Sam Mitchell from Hawthorn. For the Tigers, this was the first time one of their players had won a Brownlow Medal since Ian Stewart way back in 1971 and for Hawthorn it continued an odd trend for the club of sharing Brownlow Medals with players from other teams, the only Hawthorn winner in his own right to this stage Shane Crawford in 1999.
- No Essendon player has won a Brownlow Medal after 2012, and with this award stripped from the club James Hird's 1996 win remains the last by the Bombers to date and drought of 30 years.
- After the ineligibility of Corey McKernan in 1996 and Chris Grant in 1997, St Kilda's Robert Harvey won the award again in 1998 this time by having most votes, while Shane Crawford became the first Hawthorn player to win a Brownlow on his own in 1999. There was an odd sense of de ja vu following the 2016 re-awarding of the 2012 Brownlow to Trent Cotchin and Sam Mitchell when in 2017 Richmond's Dustin Martin won the award outright, with this followed in 2018 by Tom Mitchell becoming the first Hawthorn player after Shane Crawford to win a Brownlow Medal on his own.
