The Perquisitors
Like everyone else I like to understand the reasons why things happen, for example----why a team wins or the stock market goes down or why a certain horse wins a race. More than that I like to know which players are the best, which stocks are the best, which horses at the track will win.
For the most part the media perquisitors, also known as analysts, handicappers, sport commentators, etc. are polished (sometimes) hot air bags whose windy emotional surges often lead me to feel like if I want any shit out of them I will squeeze their heads. In the case of football, horse racing, and the stock market the perquisitors take the results and create plausible reasons for the result. Their explanations may be plausible but a good percentage of the time wrong.
If these perquisitors really understood the genesis of the results they would do well predicting the outcomes in advance. They don't do well predicting at all. Anyone who has ever listened to a pregame show, a stock market forecast, or a handicapper pick who will win a horse race knows how often their energetic assertions fail. In matters where their assertions can be measured, the best perquisitors hover around 60-65% mark. This clearly indicates the real factors producing the results are substantially unpredictable even for the best of perquisitors. If they can't predict, their post game analyses are equally suspect.
If the stock market goes down, whatever bad news there is in the world that day is used to explain why the market went down. If the market goes up they search for good news and claim that as the cause of the market rising. All kinds of people go to stock advisors on what kind of portfolio to put together. I don't. It just seems that if they really knew much, they wouldn't work for modest wages as an economic advisor for a major investment firm as trained 'Avon salespersons'. They would simply take their own advice and get rich. I am old enough now to remember when the worth of a stock depended on the performance of the company in question, or the Fund in question. Now, pretty much all the stocks swing together in large swings all in one day. They soar way up and then they immediately or soon fall way down. And a lot of people make big money betting on the timing of these huge swings. The individual companies are almost incidental. This is not to say that certain companies will not collapse for this or that reason causing the stock to plunge drastically all on its own. If these economic advisors really understood why the market goes up or down certain days they would often be calling the shots the day before so one could act accordingly. When is the last time your portfolio advisor ever called you telling you what a certain stock was going to do tomorrow? They aren't going to do that because most of the time they have no real idea why the market went up or down a certain amount on a given day. But that doesn't stop the blathering gibble-gabble.
Sport commentators elevate the blathering gibble-gabble to emotional agitated rapid fire character assassination and/or erroneous personal predictions. No matter how often they are proven wrong, there they are back next week telling us all over again what will happen or why things happened, and most of it is nothing more than garbage in, garbage out. At some point it often becomes comical. I root for the Cowboys because I find Terrell Owens an interesting character study. First I was told the Cowboys hadn't won a playoff game in many years because the former Coach Parcells was a mean spirited task master and made the whole training thing unpleasant for the players. The new Coach Phillips was going to make the Cowboys invincible because he made practice fun, listened to the players, and made them all function happily together. The team won a few games and suddenly he was the perfect coach, the team the perfect accumulation of stars, and thus the team to beat. Then they lost some games and suddenly Phillips had no control over the team, the team was dysfunctional, the players all selfish or prima donas. And of course at first they would be great because their offense would be unstopable, then later it was the defense which was the best, and finally today no one really knows what to say anymore. The truth seems to be regarding most of this rancous debate with all the clever put-downs and fawning adulations, that there are so many variables in football, including the injuries, that just about anything can happen in a given game and true to form, anything does happen.
Football commentators have the most fun. They love to hate and love to adulate. One can pretty much pick any particular commentator and you know for that season which players or coaches are going to be blamed for any team's success or failure. If they don't like a player then the team either is losing because of him or winning in spite of him. The lucky players escape anyone's microscope. If they drop an occasional pass it is forgotten by the next play. If the target of a sport commentator's ire drops a pass it will be focal point of their attention and the highlight of their day. Sometimes I suspect I like Terrell Owens because he has them all in a dither---his supporters and his haters all at once. You see as much of Terrell Owens on camera during a game as you do the game itself. Whether he does well or little of anything during a game it will be Terrell called to the podium post game for network coverage. Yet outside the interview setting Terrell hardly says much of anything to anyone, and is essentially a stoic during practices. Terrell vowed he was going to be somebody in life and these commentators, especially the haters, make his dreams come true. He seems to have tired of it a bit of late and not as fun to observe anymore. Maybe he is just going to coast to retirement from football.
When it comes to football, horse racing, and the stock market all of us get suckered into thinking we can make a science out of something that is quite unpredictable. We use stats to rank football players. What a farce in many respects. Take wide receiver stats, it would take a sophisticated computer program to sort it all out. Who was their quarterbacks, how often were they double teamed, how many times was the ball thrown their way, how much time were they injured and couldn't even be in the game, what was the strength of the teams in their division, what was the quality of the other receivers on the team, who were their coaches, how good were their running backs, and the list goes on and on. Terrell figured all this out and plays the OR ELSE game better than any other receiver with the exception of Jerry Rice----who he learned it from and took it to another level. No matter how useful as a decoy on the field, everyone on the team knows there is a threshold level for getting Terrell the ball, especially near the goal line. While the unenlightened preach on and on about being a team player Terrell knows it is only the personal stats which count come salary time, retention on a team, and fan support.
The point of all this is that these perquisitors are more like Jerry Springer than reasoned analysts. Especially in football. It is some sort of crazy football dating game. Adjectives abound and silly nonsense prevails over any reasoned analysis, which probably is beyond reach anyway. Terry Bradshaw is the perfect caricature of a football perquisitor---endless packaged silliness. Then you have the polar opposite in someone like Peter King of Sports Illustrated---the dour professorial idiot who considers himself some sort of high priest of football. He deludes himself into thinking he knows something about football when all he really knows is what kind of players he likes, much like he knows which wines he likes at a wine tasting event.
So pray tell, if any of the above is true, why would anyone, including myself, ever get involved with football, the stock market, or horse racing? I guess the stock market, over time, can be a fairly safe gamble to increase your financial portfolio (at least until recently when it has become more of a bet on the onset and endings of these swings). Horse racing and football are simply entertainment. Football is entertaining because it has a good pace and is mostly unpredictable. Football is the "I can't believe this" sport. Some like the violence involved. If a player can knock someone senseless or into a minor orbit that replay will be highlighted for days. And it is complicated enough to challenge those who want a lot of things to analyze. Hell, there are like 17 position coaches. I wonder if any player could actually name all 17 of the position coaches. Fans think there is all this team interaction. Hardly the case at all. When a reporter asked someone on the Giant team how much of a 'distraction' (favorite word of some sport fans) Plexico Buress was, the guy said simply "I rarely have any contact with him, how could he be a distraction?" Terrell once forbid anyone to talk to him except his Position Coach and his Head Coach, and when the Head Coach told him to shut up Terrell told him to "shut up". And during this period of time Terrell had some of his best games. So much for all this interaction. And yup, all those on the team during those turbulent times, with the exception of Donovan, including all the coaches, today speak favorably about Terrell. Why? I thought he was a distraction? The answer is simple. Terrell knows football. Terrell knows his position. Terrell stays in shape year round. Terrell works hard in practice. Terrell, rather than being distraction, hardly ever talks to anyone during practice and never goes anywhere with anyone outside of practice. And come game day Terrell is ready and gives it his all in all aspects of the game. Terrell listens as long as it is about making his game better. Of course the coaches and teammates appreciate Terrell. He focuses on this job and his job alone and gets it done. Funny, but that is really all that counts and the coaches know it. I guess Terrell is for sure a distraction: TO THE REST OF US. That says as much about us as about him.
