In what can only be called transcendent clairvoyance, I, me, the guy typing these words, correctly predicted the final point total of the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. Just how rare and amazing is this feat? ESPN has no fewer than 71 of their finest "experts" guess the final score of the game and not a single one of them had the Giants final score as 21 points. How was I so incredibly on the mark when so many others were so horribly off-base I am sure you are not asking. Well, it is my proprietary, neural network-based algorithm which incorporates chaos theory, the anti-life equation, and the number 42 that I have honed and refined in my 53 years of intense football studies. My Dartboard 5000 system is without equal. So, now you are probably not asking yourself, how to I get access to the Dartboard 5000 so I can take down all of Vegas like the crew of Oceans 11 (but not Oceans 12 and 13, those movies were terrible)? For a limited time only (which is from the moment you decide to give me money to the moment you decide to stop), you can have the keys to kingdom for only $9.99 a month (plus shipping and handling). You get all of my sure-fire, can't miss predictions as soon as they come out of my head (predictions not guaranteed to be right, just guaranteed to be predictions). Sign up now and watch the money to start rolling in (to my bank account).
(For clarity sake, we will not discuss my predictions for the New England Patriots final score or the winning team. We wouldn't want to confuse the message.)
With football dominating the national conversation one last weekend, now seems like a good time to revisit my beginning of the season predictions for the National Football League. Here is what I predicted versus the actual, deeply flawed real life outcomes.
AFC EastPredicted Actual
New England 13-3 13-3
New York Jets 11-5 8-8
Miami 4-12 6-10
Buffalo 4-12 6-10
AFC North
Pittsburgh 14-2 12-4
Baltimore 9-7 12-4
Cleveland 7-9 4-12
Cincinnati 4-12 9-7
AFC South
Houston 9-7 10-6
Indianapolis 8-8 2-12
Tennessee 8-8 9-7
Jacksonville 3-13 5-11
AFC West
San Diego 13-3 8-8
Denver 7-9 8-8
Kansas City 6-10 7-9
Oakland 2-14 8-8
NFC East
Philadelphia 13-3 8-8
Dallas 11-5 8-8
New York Giants 10-6 9-7
Washington 4-12 5-11
NFC North
Green Bay 14-2 15-1
Minnesota 8-8 3-13
Detroit 7-9 10-6
Chicago 3-13 8-8
NFC South
New Orleans 13-3 13-3
Tampa Bay 10-6 4-12
Atlanta 9-7 10-6
Carolina 3-13 6-10
NFC West
St. Louis 9-7 2-14
Seattle 8-8 7-9
San Francisco 7-9 13-3
Arizona 5-11 8-8
With a Super Bowl of San Diego over New Orleans.
Overall, I have to say I didn't do too terrible with my first public attempt at playing NFL oracle. Although both of my Super Bowl picks were wrong, I got 4 of the 6 AFC playoff teams and 3 of the 6 NFC playoff teams right. I did put both the Giants and the Pats into the playoffs and even on the playoff teams that I missed with, I wasn't embarrassly off. Probably my biggest mistakes were St. Louis, Tampa Bay, and Cincinnati. St. Louis and Tampa Bay turned out to be bad teams that capitalized on a weak schedule the year before only to return to form this year. Cincinnati, I would say, is this year's version of St. Louis and Tampa Bay. I fully expect Cincy to be a losing team again next year. On the good side, I picked Houston's first ever playoff appearance.
The one lesson I learned from this exercise was not to try to pick final records based on individual game match-ups because it is impossible to pick the upsets before the season starts. What you end up with is your really good teams with too many wins and your bad teams with too many losses. Once you realize the top and the bottom of the league are too out of whack you end up just randomly picking upsets to better balance wins and losses. And that kind of defeats the purpose. Next, your I will just pick final records based on realistic exceptions of what NFL record distributions look like.
One final note just because I like to say I told you so. NFL parity is no more real than Bigfoot and compassionate conservatism. The conference championship games featured 3 teams that have been the most winning teams of the last decade and the 4th team was one of the most successful franchises of all time that just happened to fall on hard times of late. And now the Super Bowl is the same exact set of teams that were in the Super Bowl four short years ago. In fact, in the last 9 Super Bowls, only 3 different teams have represented the AFC in the big game and only 4 teams in the last 11 championship games. You do see that kind of repetitiveness in a league dominated by parity. I think it is time to put that one to bed.
My pick for the winner of Super Bowl XLVI - New England Patriots 32, New York Giants 21
After briefly pausing at our new base camp, our climb up Mount Everest has resumed. Despite suffering through the setback of a 1 for 27 stretch, we ended up advancing our overall win percentage to 17.2%. Winning at a 20% clip now seems like it is an obtainable goal. To win 1 out of 5 hands of solitaire seems above average mean to me. But then again, soon it will be quite average for me. That is the greatness that is my solitaire mastery.
At the beginning of this exercise, I said I was going to start giving some names to the various aspects of the game so that I could more efficiently communicate my grand strategies. I already introduced the term "gutter ball" to mean finishing a hand of solitaire with out being able to make a single card play. Today we add another vocabulary word - "codon". From hence forth, this word will be used to refer to the set of three cards you turn over from the deck (see picture below). My word is law.
Day 48 – 2 of 8 (199.5, 4.01, 49.56)
Day 49 – 4 of 8 (201)
Day 50 – 0 of 6 (201, 4, 49.38)
Day 51 – 2 of 9 (201)
Day 52 – 1 of 1 (202, 4, 48.56)
Day 53 – 0 of 5 (200.5, 4, 48.33)
Day 54 – 0 of 10 (200.5, 4.04, 49.36)
Day 55 – 1 of 12 (200.5)
Day 56 – 3 of 7 (201)
Day 57 – 1 of 6 (201)
Day 58 – 1 of 4 (201)
Day 59 – 2 of 8 (201.5)
Total - 89 of 516 (17.2%)
The Sure to be Wrong Prediction of the Week
This week I am going to take a shot at predicting the first movie this year to break the $100 million mark. Since none of the movies released so far this year stand a chance of reaching the century mark (Sorry wolf-punchingLiam Neeson) this is truly a forward looking exercise. In 4 out of the last 5 years, a movie released in January or February reached 100 mil. So I am going to play the odds and say we are going to have our first century club member in hand before Rare Disease Day has passed. By making that declaration, we dramatically limited the field. So let's take a quick look at the remaining candidate.
There is no clear cut blockbuster in the February slate. There are several recognizable names releasing films but none of them really are the type that carry big money makers. The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Denzel Washington, Drew Barrymore, Nic Cage, and Harry Potter all stand a good chance of getting a movie a $50 million gross but not much more. We also have a couple of sequels on our hands but the original Journey and Ghost Rider movies barely made it to $100 million last time and no one seems to really be clamoring for another go around with these stories. So what does that leave us with?
The three movies that I think have the best chance to go big time are Chronicle, This Means War, and Wanderlust. Chronicle feels like a really interesting, decidedly dark take on the superhero trope and the found footage angle clearly still has legs. It is hard to get a real feel for how interested people are for this because it is such a genre movie and the it features unknowns in an understated advertising campaign. There is a chance this could be another Cloverfield but in the end I just don't think there is enough critical mass behind this movie.
Next I will tackle Wanderlust. This one actually does have a star that has shown she can deliver a $100 million dollar movie. Jennifer Aniston has scored two $100 millioncomedies in a row. But this movie seems fairly generic. Another movie about harried professionals slowing down and learning to enjoy life. Haven't seen that story in the theaters....since lastmonth 6 monthsin a row. Also, it is released the last week of February so all the other movie in front of it have to fall down in order for it to be first to the finish line.
That leaves us with This Means War. Bane (an English national working for the CIA?) and Captain Kirk fight over Reese Witherspoon who every seems to have stopped caring about 10 years ago. But it is a big budget action/comedy coming out around Valentine's Day. That "holiday" has helped other movies break through to the rarefied air. And has alot of the look and feel of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (the folks that made that movie made this one too), which was quite successful and really enjoyable. So, I am going to put all my Monopoly money down on This Means War as the year's first $100 million movie. (my hedge - I would not be surprised if this movie topped out at $75 million).
Predictions are cheap in every sense of the word. There is no risk to one's bank account or reputation because predictions are forgotten almost as quickly as they are thrown off. That is probably why we have become a culture of meaningless predictions. Entire networks have been built around talking heads with dubious credentials predicting the end of the world, the next Enron, or (most importantly) whether Chris Johnson's holdout will result in him rushing for 92 yards or 105 yards in the season opener. And yet, despite all of the super, secret insider knowledge possessed by TV's many Nostradamuses, the great insights spouted by the know-it-alls of the world are almost always wrong. Of course that fact doesn't stop them from being ultraconfident that there next forecast will be right on the money. And why should it stop me as well. I am almost guaranteed to as good as the best ex-jock on ESPN family of networks and if I actually do hit on anything I predict, I can immediately point back to it as evidence of my pure genius. If I am wrong, well no one will ever see this post anyway. So without further ado, here are my predictions for the 2011 NFL season. And yes, I picked Green Bay over New Orleans in the opener (trust me - I am always right).
AFC East
New England 13-3
New York Jets 11-5
Miami 4-12
Buffalo 4-12
AFC North
Pittsburgh 14-2
Baltimore 9-7
Cleveland 7-9
Cincinnati 4-12
AFC South
Houston 9-7
Indianapolis 8-8
Tennessee 8-8
Jacksonville 3-13
AFC West
San Diego 13-3
Denver 7-9
Kansas City 6-10
Oakland 2-14
NFC East
Philadelphia 13-3
Dallas 11-5
New York Giants 10-6
Washington 4-12
NFC North
Green Bay 14-2
Minnesota 8-8
Detroit 7-9
Chicago 3-13
NFC South
New Orleans 13-3
Tampa Bay 10-6
Atlanta 9-7
Carolina 3-13
NFC West
St. Louis 9-7
Seattle 8-8
San Francisco 7-9
Arizona 5-11
With a Super Bowl of San Diego over New Orleans.
This blog poster is sponsored by the Nucleic Exchange Research and Development.
But one prediction that I didn’t get down on silicon in time was my the strong feeling from the trailer that Cars 2 was going to be the big letdown that breaks Pixar’s streak of instant classics (Personally I consider Ratatouille to be the first blemish on their reputation but I will go with the critics here and pretend that it was a classic). It didn’t play like a Pixar movie. It felt like a Dreamsworks’ movie. A shameless grab for the easy money that comes with a quicky sequel and a built-in merchandising franchise. And the full length thing just proved all of those concerns to be on target. The wafer thin plot and a nonsensical twist ending (it made absolutely no sense in retrospect or in immediate inspection) had the stench of Disney’s fine tradition of sequels like Aladdin: The Return of Jafar or Cinderella II - Dreams Come True. This movie clearly existed only to get their branded toys back on the shelves and drilled into kids’ cerebrum’s. The Toy Story sequels had made us think Pixar was different. They weren’t wearing the Katzenberg albatross that gave us Lilo and Stitch 2: Stitch as a Glitch. But it is clear now. The only 2 Pixar movies to get sequels to date (Monsters Inc. 2 will soon make this statement out dated) were the ones that spawned successful toy lines. The announcement of a fourth Toy Story movie, despite the artistic crescendo of Toy Story 3 (should have won the best picture Oscar last year but an animated movie will never win) that provided one of the best trilogy conclusions ever only, only underlines, bolds, and italicizes the swallowing up of the Pixar vision by the Disney marketing monster. Oh well, we will always have WALL-E.
Oh and here is one more of my outdated predictions for the road. 3D movies are an overpriced fad that tries to convince people to pay premium pricing for a diminished movie going experience. It will soon pass. Also, we will one day fly like the birds, walk on the moon, ride around in horseless carriages, and tame the mighty power of the open flame. Man, my ability to predict the past is amazing.
This blog poster is sponsored by the Four-Five-Six Laundry.
