Media”Pros”

The game of soccer is made to seem very complex. Just how many people can really define a”West Coast offense?” How many can accurately identify a”zone blitz,” or even a”nickel” or”dime” defense?

NFL analysts in the media have fast answers to all these questions. They’ve a listing of every player and his album at their hands. They’ve staff-written replicate on hand to describe all kinds of sport plans. They have arrays of data to cover any situation.

Because of the networking, pro football is a game of virtually no hidden information. However, it’s one thing to describe an event that is already over. It is something different entirely to try to predict that which has yet to occur.

When the media try to predict game results, they have a tendency to do badly. To give only a few examples from nyc, where I live, every Friday eleven New York Post writers make predictions on NFL games against the spread. I have never seen these handicappers always select the 52.4% winners necessary to conquer the 11-to-10 chances sports bettors should give. In fact, virtually every year for the past 20 years that the consensus in the Article has completed under 50 percent.

One of the Post handicappers often mentions trends in his handicapping evaluation –how teams do on turf or grass, as favorites or underdogs, etc.. But trends are mostly useless these days since teams change so fast as a result of free agency. What does it matter if a team is 12-and-4 on street turf throughout the previous five years if only three of its players have been there that long?

On the radio, WFAN commentators also make predictions every Friday. But they too have seldom picked the 52.4 percentage winners needed to beat the 11-to-10. To cover this, they often speak about their records in relation to the .500 mark. The vig seems to not exist in the entire world of WFAN.

And on television, ESPN’s Hank Goldberg has beaten the 11-to-10 in only one of the seven years he’s been there.

From personal experience, I have discovered that many TV producers and newspaper editors view sports as entertainment rather than serious journalism. That is why you, as a serious handicapper, should take media predictions using a big grain of salt.

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