Kentucky's versatility . . .North Carolina's "length" . . . Syracuse's interior defense without Melo . . . the perimeter game of Team X versus the 2-3 zone of Team Y . . . and on and on. A glut of basketball savants, "bracketologists" and coaching experts fill the airwaves these days with their gratuitous knowledge.
So how many of the hoops cognoscenti could even conceive of Lehigh beating Duke? Norfolk State downing Missouri? Ohio U. ousting Michigan?
In all of the free market, nowhere are supply and demand more out of balance than in the market for sports "experts." Every ink-stained wretch, gabber and Twitmonger can fill your ears with the number of Drexel's top-100 wins, but for all the words they expend on the subject, not one of them can out-pick the chalkline on their bracket sheet.
There's nothing wrong with that, of course. The winds of fortune are more powerful than a seed line. It's the claims of expertise that are so silly.
Just once I'd like to hear an "analyst" refuse to pick winners because it's a fool's errand. Similarly, I'd like to see a local newscast in which the weather dude admits that your guess about the weather six days from now is as good as his.
I once broadcast the news on Sundays at a radio station that used a four-day forecast from a TV meteorologist who had failed to call in. I used his Saturday forecast for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and regressed halfway to the mean for Wednesday. (A mix of sun and clouds, chance of rain around 50%, pretty much covers all bases.) An hour later, when he called in with the updated forecast, I told him what I'd done. This was his response:
"Yeah, that's what I do."
I like to keep that in mind when someone who can name the sixth man on Colorado State says something definitive about the NCAA tournament. Because until he tells me in advance that NC State, a bubble-team, is going to knock off Georgetown, a three-seed, all I hear is static anyway.
b
Just once I'd like to hear an "analyst" refuse to pick winners because it's a fool's errand. Similarly, I'd like to see a local newscast in which the weather dude admits that your guess about the weather six days from now is as good as his.
I once broadcast the news on Sundays at a radio station that used a four-day forecast from a TV meteorologist who had failed to call in. I used his Saturday forecast for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and regressed halfway to the mean for Wednesday. (A mix of sun and clouds, chance of rain around 50%, pretty much covers all bases.) An hour later, when he called in with the updated forecast, I told him what I'd done. This was his response:
"Yeah, that's what I do."
I like to keep that in mind when someone who can name the sixth man on Colorado State says something definitive about the NCAA tournament. Because until he tells me in advance that NC State, a bubble-team, is going to knock off Georgetown, a three-seed, all I hear is static anyway.
b
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