{"id":32881,"date":"2013-03-22T13:09:11","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T13:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rcntv.rcn.com\/?p=32881"},"modified":"2023-04-12T21:41:58","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T21:41:58","slug":"giving-real-prognosticators-their-due-the-sportstalk-shop-march-22nd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astound.com\/atvn\/giving-real-prognosticators-their-due-the-sportstalk-shop-march-22nd\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving Real Prognosticators Their Due – The SportsTalk Shop – March 22nd"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the madness getting underway and all the variations people have in taking their best guesses at bracketology, I think it\u2019s appropriate and to give some real prognosticators credit where credit is due!<\/p>\n

In March, there’s countless hours of sports programming and planning and studying and educated guessing for the NCAA tournament. People love to pick teams in the “Field of 68” and there’s all sorts of ways you can play your picks (none of them for any financial rewards, of course), but there’s all sorts of ways that the “experts” can accurately tell us how we should play the NCAA basketball tournament.<\/p>\n

Yet each year, my non-sports family and friends around me come up with new ways of “strategically” putting forth their college basketball playoff picks. Among them, is choosing teams with uniform or logo colors they like, picking animal-related mascots to beat non-animal mascots (or, if two animals, picking the cuter animal), or even picking teams because the team name reminds them of their favorite cartoon characters. I’ve heard just about every possible way you could pick teams in the NCAA tourney, and every time I hear one more ridiculous than years past … that person usually come closer than many experts in ending up with the correct teams.<\/p>\n

I recently had an example a bit closer to home on our own “RCN SportsTalk” show. Our weekly poll question a few shows ago dealt with picking the District XI 4A Girls & Boys champions. Pocono Mountain-West Girls were the #1 ranked team, yet the unanimous selection was Nazareth. This wasn’t a surprise since the Eagles have a loyal fan base and, even though they didn’t have as good a record as the Panthers, Nazareth played some very strong teams this year.<\/p>\n

The other part of the poll was on the men’s side, where our audience (with three exceptions), unanimously picked Parkland to beat Freedom. While Parkland was a very strong team, on paper the match-up seemed to favor the Patriots. Joe Stellato, who has done a tremendous job as Freedom’s head coach, has become a Lehigh Valley sports fan’s favorite and I couldn’t find a person who didn’t WANT him to win a title. In the previous three matches, Parkland had one two, but by small margins, and it appeared that Freedom had some things working against them in the two losses and were at full strength for the district title game. Most of our guest panelists on our district preview show — all very knowledgeable basketball minds — had picked Freedom as well. It seems on paper, that the Patriots were the team to get the nod…and yet our audience disagreed.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more! I always have said that we have a very intelligent audience, but the “SportsTalk” viewers outdid themselves not just with the Parkland pick\u2014but with the
\nscore as well! When I looked back at some of our pollsters\u2019 predictions, I saw the following insights:<\/p>\n