And the Winner Is...

Today, I read an asotonishing headline on MSN. It read, "Who'll win the NFL's most volatile division?"

What?!!! The teams are barely in training camp, and here's a sportswriter remunerating over the winners of the NFC North...for the 2008 season.

Excuse me? Have any teams played a single down? Has there been any win-loss records for the new season? I'm sorry...what was that? The season hasn't even started?

Any sports fan with half a brain knows that anything can happen over the course of a season. Nobody would have guessed that the up and coming Seattle Mariners would win a record-tying 116 games in 2001; or that the Red Sox would overcome a 3-0 deficit to advance to, and then go on to win the World Series.

My point here is that no one can predict who will win a division more than 6 months from now. There are too many variables such as injuries, the schedule, player enthusiasm (or extreme ego), weather, etc, etc.

This goes for any sport. A month or so before this years' baseball All-Star Game, I began to see who was in what position for the 'wild-card' spot in both leagues. Excuse me?!!
There were more than 82 games yet to play, and 4 more months to go. But the sportscasters, perhaps desperate to increase viewership, are talking about pennant winners in late May!! What's wrong with this picture?

How many times have we seen teams do the August bull-rush, and others do the September-swoon? Again...too many variables.

My personal approach is to just watch it all unfold. The excitement will naturally be there. In mid-September things are pretty much set--unless of course a swoon occurs...a make-it or break-it time for players and fans alike...and damned exciting, too!

I only wish the sportswriters and broadcasters would swoon, and all their hot-air predictions get carried away like the dreams of so many professional sports teams when they fail to live up to all the pre-season hype heaped upon them by the salf-same sports writers and broadcasters who months before predicted their teams' path to glory.