Ah, that time of year, March, where the snow melts off…..wait, it already did. Okay then, try to use a different metaphor.
Or just skip the metaphors and understand that we are entering a period of hype, misinformation, misdirection, and noise so cacophonous that it’s impossible to avoid yet still serves no real purpose.
Welcome to the season of the mock.
I’m not talking about anything real. Unfortunately in sports, reality is too difficult and complicated for some to grasp, so they run to the alternative, imaginatively carving out a very profitable niche out of absolutely nothing.
It comes in two forms. One is in college basketball, where two big, exciting and memorable tournaments are about to tip off, but not before we’re inundated with endless reminders of who is in and out of these fields from people who, notably, are not on the actual committees making the actual selections.
Far worse is the lead-up to the NFL Draft, because heaven forbid you go an entire day without 10 different people offering 10 different versions of a draft still weeks (and several trades) away and, again, none of these people are making the actual decisions.
You see, it’s quite easy to put out multiple renditions of the same bracket or draft because, hey, no one’s going to take your job if you’re off target – in fact, you get elevated to the title “Bracketologist” or “Draft Expert”, more important than the people whose lives, futures and careers you are assessing.
Guess who doesn’t get that luxury? Basketball coaches whose employment might depend on whether the initials associated with their season are NCAA or NIT, or NFL general managers who have no time to theorize about 20 different trades or selections, especially since, if one of them goes wrong, they could get canned.
Besides, it’s always delicious to see people loudly proclaim their distaste for the decisions rendered, only to find out that, hey, maybe the guys knew what they were doing all along.
A clear example of this was 2011. When the NCAA dance card went from 65 to 68 teams, a lot of disdain was thrown the way of Virginia Commonwealth University for having the temerity to take one of the last spots in the field instead of some meddling team that just went .500 in their power conference. Then the Rams got to the Final Four.
More recently, there was the lead-up to the 2023 NFL Draft and the utter conviction of many that Bryce Young was can’t-miss and C.J. Stroud was a gamble, simply based on perceptions and test scores and other trivial matters. One season in, Stroud has proven far better, having turned the bottom-feeding Houston Texans into a division champion and playoff winner.
No matter how many times this happens, though, we never learn the lesson. We never step back, take a breath and realize that good choices are not based on the amount of attention they might get.
When, this Sunday, the NCAA fields are announced, two things will happen. One, the bracket nuts will crow about how many they got right, as if the tournament is about them. Spoiler alert – it isn’t.
Then we’ll go right to predictions, made with absolute certainty by people who ought to know better. Seth Davis was certain Montana would beat Syracuse in 2013 and loudly announced it the moment the bracket went up. A few days alter…Final Four-bound Orange 81, Grizzlies 34. Genius.
Fast forward a month, and the mock NFL Draft boards will continue to pile up, even as trades happen all the way up to the moment of selections, rendering most, if not all, of those projections moot.
Worse yet is the instant grades. For the love of all things holy, can we refrain ourselves from assessing how teams do with their picks until these guys, you know, actually play a down? It’s like grading a test before anyone’s taken it.
Pick your analogy, whether it’s skipping ahead in a book until the final chapter or fast-forwarding a movie to the last 10 minutes. In sports, the journey is where the richest stories are told and deepest lessons are learned – a fact that you can’t fake, or mock.
