There are many adages out there about young people not respecting their elders, or being ignorant about things that you never really understand when you hear them as a child. The only way you can learn about how true some of these adages are is simply to get older and experience them.
This is true in nearly all facets of life. You don't have to be a sports fan to learn that experience can indeed be the best teacher in many cases. You could play the tuba or install kitchen sinks or work at a factory that produces shoes. I have learned how experience can be the greatest teacher of all, and I probably still have much more to learn about it as well.
I'm sure this happens with athletes all the time. When you are a college football player, you aren't as experienced or knowledgeable as you are when you have played in the NFL for a decade. And just because I'm not a football player doesn't mean as a fan I can't learn this same lesson.
The middle of January is a good time for this lesson to be taught, and as I read or hear news about sports today, I realize that my perspective on what I am consuming is much different than it was not too long ago.
With conference championship games coming up this weekend in the NFL, television and radio hosts hype up their predictions and wait until the last part of the show to give the great reveal of who they think will win the games this weekend. Writers wait until the day before the games to give their predictions so their readers will hang on their every word until finally we get to find out who all the local sports columnists think will come out victorious.
For the sake of their shows and their columns, I understand why things are done this way. Hardcore listeners or readers will continue to boost the ratings of the shows and generate more clicks on their websites. It's how things work, and I am not criticizing these people for doing things like this. What I do realize though, and this goes back to that experience thing, is that none of these predictions by any of these people matter one bit.
What am I gaining from hearing or reading what these predictions are? Nothing. They don't have any bearing on how I will watch these games, and they don't have any bearing on how the games will be played either. Just because some local television host in Waco, Texas thinks the Patriots will win means absolutely nothing to me and it means absolutely nothing to anyone who will be playing in Kansas City on Sunday. So these predictions that are happening around the country really don't matter to the four teams still standing.
For the other 28 teams and their fans, aside from Sunday, the focus has mostly shifted to the NFL Draft this upcoming April. It is just the beginning of mock draft season. We will have expert after expert predict what players will be selected by what teams, and endless tapes and measurements will be analyzed again and again. All of this will be done by people who, in the end, will have absolutely nothing to do with what actually happens on the night of the draft.
When it comes to mock drafts, I must say that I do find them useful simply for reading about the players, most of whom I have never seen play before. I don't really need that information now though. It is actually the most useful after the draft ends. Then I can go back and find the analyses of the guys drafted. Even then though, it is often times useless because it is very hard to predict how these players will end up performing as pros. I used to worry about what expert had what prospect going to what team, but I realize now that all of these predictions pretty much mean nothing. I don't care who Expert A or Expert B says the Giants will select, because unless they happen to be Dave Gettleman or Pat Shurmur, it has no bearing on what will actually happen.
The next thing I have listened to and read about over the past few days that I used to worry about, but now could not care less about is All Star voting. Right now, Derrick Rose is second in the Western Conference of NBA All Star voting, and I hear people making a big fuss about it. How could he have more votes than James Harden or Russell Westbrook? That's outrageous! In reality, maybe it is. Harden and Westbrook are certainly having better seasons than Rose, but Rose has more votes than both of them. That's what happens when fans vote on the starters for these games though. The most popular players get the most votes. It's that simple.
It isn't like Harden and Westbrook aren't going to make the All Star team either. They are both having great years. The All Star teams have more than five spots on them. When the NBA All Star Game is played, both of those guys are going to be there. And right now, it appears that Rose will be there as well. And you know what? That's totally fine. Good for Derrick Rose. Being second in voting in the Western Conference means that fans like him, and the All Star game doesn't have any bearing on the standings, so what is so bad about him being a starter?
Many years in the future, when we look back on the careers of current players, we might use All Star appearances as a means of comparing them. And when we look at who was an All Star in 2019, I'm sure Westbrook and Harden will be on that list, as well as Rose. Twenty years from now, we aren't going to care who started the game in 2019, we are going to see that all three of them made the team, and then move on. We aren't going to check the box score to see how many minutes each of them played and how efficiently they shot the ball and who turned the ball over the most. They all were All Stars in 2019, that's it. Then we'll move on.
In all honesty, the likelihood that I won't watch the NBA All Star game this year is probably much higher than the likelihood that I will watch the game. It isn't the NBA Finals. It isn't even Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs. What happens in the All Star game has absolutely nothing to do with what will happen in those games, so why do we care so much about who will be on the floor to start the All Star Game?
I don't remember who won any All Star games in any sport last year, and I'm totally fine with that. I could probably guess many of the starters for the games. They are probably many of the same players that will start the games this season, because the fans usually vote in the same players year after year. If I wasn't able to guess them all though, I really wouldn't care. As the years go by, the starters become less and less important anyway, and they really aren't important at all to begin with.
So listen to your favorite writers and analysts predict what will happen in the football games this weekend. Read all the mock drafts you want. Stuff the ballot boxes with your All Star votes. I will just enjoy the games and draft without having to worry about looking like I knew what was going to happen when what I thought didn't matter at all in the first place. Experience as a fan has taught me that none of that stuff matters one bit, and when the games are played and the draft is complete, all of those predictions will have not affected the outcomes one bit.
Daily Rangers Update: The Rangers got a nice win at home against a struggling Blackhawks team last night, and will play the Bruins tomorrow night. They have been able to recover a little bit from a very rough stretch, but still sit on the outside looking in on the playoffs right now, and will need a strong second half to even get into the postseason.
Daily NBA Update: DeMarcus Cousins will make his season debut for the Warriors tonight, and it is pretty crazy to think that a team already stacked with so much talent hasn't even played a game all season yet with a player the caliber of Cousins. I don't care about who fits where or who gets the ball when. Adding Cousins is only going to make the best team in the NBA even better.
Daily NFL Update: Weather seems like it might be a factor this weekend in Kansas City, as the temperatures are supposed to be in the single digits. If you look at the history of bad weather games though, often times it doesn't play as big a role as you might believe, so we will have to see what happens on Sunday and just hope that the games are exciting.
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