An Ode to the Experts

Your fantasy football draft is right around the corner. Training camps have begun. The circus is back in town. Another new season of great games, thrills and excitement by players running, catching, throwing the football for some amazing scoring plays.

And another season of bumbling, stumbling, fumbling idiots that don’t have a clue what they’re doing. We’re not talking about players and coaches, here though. We’re talking about fantasy football experts.

I cannot understand how so many fantasy football fans, who number in the millions, can give so much credence to the so called expertise of people who are so wrong so often. Fantasy football experts have got to have the worst track records of giving advice on how the various players will play that week than any expertise field I have ever seen. Even weathermen and women do a better job at rain forecasting rain daily than fantasy football experts do at forecasting who will run, throw, catch, kick, play defense in almost any game of any week.

Granted, it’s not a perfect science. No one knows for sure exactly how well or not well everyone, or for that matter anyone, is going to play that week. It is more about probabilities, percentages and the likelihood that they will play well vs. not play well. And I get that.

Here’s the problem. The so called experts have their little game within the games where they come up with charts ranking how the various position players will do that week fantasy pointswise. The statement they make is, “You (the fans) don’t have to think about how to rank your players. We (the experts) have done that for you. So all you have to do is follow our rankings for your starting lineup and you will win this week.” They say it in a very pompous, expertly anointed way. Look at me. I’m a fantasy football expert. This would seem to have the potential to be very helpful to people. Experts giving tips on who will play well to help you make out your lineups. Except, they are not experts. THEY ARE WRONG about half the time.

I have seen weeks where the experts have stated a running back (we’ll give him a name like, oh, Chris Johnson) “will absolutely go off that week. We rank him the number one running back on our board. You can bet the farm that he will do great for your fantasy team.” And he goes for about twelve yards in fifteen carries, which is the fantasy equivalent of a rotten smelling egg. Ditto with wide receivers proclaimed to be number one on a board out of fifty others, and they end up with the same rotten egg performance (two catches for twelve yards). Or quarterbacks predicted to do great and end up throwing four interceptions and all around end up stinking up the place.

I have seen this pathetic prognosticating pattern before. It happens pretty much every week of the fantasy football season. And I understand that nobody is perfect and forecasting mistakes can be made.

But what I don’t like is that the so called experts, who have been given the gift of having jobs where all they really have to do is watch football and offer opinions on how well certain people will play, have taken it upon themselves to think that their opinions are more important than the games themselves. And, that their opinions about the players in those games, when they are wrong, which turns out to be quite often, are the fault of the players and not themselves. As if the players have some kind of responsibility to fulfilling fantasy football hosts’ wishes vs. their real job on the field of trying to help their team win games. It is not the players’ fault (when “experts” who picked them to do well and then they fail to meet expectations) that fantasy fans were duped into thinking a player would do great.

It is the experts’ fault for picking wrong and for trying to dupe the fans into thinking they are experts. When the football season starts, I’ve got a suggestion. Pick a few “fantasy experts.” Keep track of everything they say. Have an ongoing scorecard of your own picks vs. these so called expert picks. This could be more fun than playing regular fantasy football. I believe there are football fans out there playing fantasy that are far smarter than any of these so called experts.

My point is there are no experts in fantasy football. Some people are smart at this. Some people not so smart. Some fall in between. The problem is, many of the people who either are not so smart or they are at best average, are the ones who got jobs in the fantasy business. Just because they happen to be on a TV show does not make them an expert. Next time you are wavering between your player and the one the resident expert suggests, go with your own decision. It’s your team.