01/19/10 10:19 AM
Beware conventional wisdom
In the past
weekend, six of ESPN’s eight professional
NFL analysts picked the
Dallas Cowboys to defeat the Minnesota
Vikings.
The Vikings
smashed the Cowboys so badly that the visitors from
Dallas whined afterwards about a superfluous touchdown
at the end of the game.

All eight of
ESPN’s professional NFL analysts picked the San Diego
Chargers to defeat the New York Jets. The Jets handled
the Chargers and will play the Indianapolis Colts in
Indy on Sunday.
To their credit,
all eight predicted the Colts victory over
Baltimore.
Even with the
unanimity for the Colts, three of ESPN’s NFL experts,
Mike Golic, Seth Wickersham and Merril Hoge, picked
three of the weekend’s four games incorrectly.
They
made those picks even though the network's "Accuscore"
computer simulation system predicted three of the four
games correctly.
Why did this
happen and what should it mean for
you?
Conventional
wisdom about what will happen next week often is based
on what happened last week. Conventional wisdom comes
from opinions that spread virally, from talk shows to
columnists to bars and back to talk shows with the
original rationales disappearing in the
trail.
For those who
need to steer conventional wisdom, it’s important to
push the thoughts of opinion leaders with fresh
information and appealing arguments. For those who need
to predict outcomes, it’s important to resist the
instant theorists and rely on those with perspective
and experience.
Tags: Colts, conventional wisdom,
predictions