The only true prediction is: More will follow

First appeared on January 21st, 2010
in The Lebanon Reporter

With the NFL playoffs upon us once more it’s important to remember Roger Goodell’s Fifth Commandment: “Thou shall take stock in the predictions of former quarterbacks and coaches”. Yogi Berra once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” and it was in this spirit that we labored to understand the mass hysteria that is picking games before they happen by conducting a study of predictions.
Now before Brian Williams goes all “Fleecing of America” on us, this isn’t your run of the mill scientific study we’ve seen squandering tax payer dollars only to reveal the obvious such as “Friday afternoons are the most productive hours in a work week”. You friends of PETA will rest safe knowing that no animals were harmed during the research either.
There were no lumpish, axe-grinding professors or money hungry college kids willing to risk humiliation for spending money. It was simply one man, his couch, a young son playing with his Mr. Potato Head and a television broadcasting a network dedicated to nothing but sports.
There were 12 subjects in our focus group. Each person picked a winner from all four playoff games over the weekend. After 48 guesses were made came the ground breaking discovery that these subjects operated with just a 39% rate of success; which gives a whole new meaning to the term expert.
In an effort to avoid embarrassing anyone (and legal action) we’ll protect the names of those in our study. The most effective predictor however was the guy who runs the show; the same one who hands out all the nicknames. Two guys, a former defensive lineman (whose first name includes almost as many letters as the entire alphabet) and the old bear himself, missed all four picks.
Three experts picked against Indianapolis and only one (the only former Jet on the set) picked the Jets over the Chargers. If you’re trying to decide which of their “NFL Insiders” is more reliable, the old guy and the young guy were both .500 for the weekend.
Of course 39% begs the question, what other line of work could you be so wrong so often and still have a job? OK, besides meteorology, politicians and those who write horoscopes.
If seeing an anti-whaling vessel the size of a canoe get T-Boned by a Japanese whaling rig the size of a cruise ship has taught us anything, it’s that life can be very dangerous when we choose to make it so. The same is true for predicting.
In fact the world of predicting is often pressure packed and predictors who predict wrong would be right to predict the experience to be deflating. Deflating like that art academy advertised on television that evaluates your sketch of a turtle clutching a cluster of balloons only to cash your $75 check before crushing your dreams with a ten cent form letter stating you don’t have what it takes to be admitted into their school after all; (not that I’ve ever applied).
The findings of our study revealed that predicting is tough stuff. In fact we discovered the three most difficult jobs in the world are those guessing peoples weight at the county fair, those pretending to be part-time sports columnists and the lucky few granted the opportunity, and nationwide air-time, to predict the outcome of professional sporting events.
If we’ve learned anything here it’s that predicting is a lot like playing UNO, it’s easy to do- but difficult to do well. There is one true prediction that can be made however and that is that more predictions are sure to come.