A Bad Day For Predictions

When the Bulgarian women's hockey team took to the ice yesterday against Slovakia in an Olympic pre-qualifier, they probably didn't think they had a great shot. After all, they were playing the #1 team in the region and had been completely drubbed by each opponent leading up to this point.

But 82-0? There is no way that they (or anyone) expected an 82 goal deficit. But that's what they got and that is one of the great things about sports: almost every time your expectations will be confounded. It is the unpredictability that makes trying to predict it so fun (and lucrative if you're good at it).

Just look at the last few days. The second* best team in NFL history comes off of a nearly perfect season with basically the entire team returning, but guns blazing in a whole new way because they were pissed they lost. First drive...bang! Tom Brady goes down and they may not ever be a playoff favorite anymore. And not only has his replacement never started an NFL game, he never started a college game either!

At the same moment that Brady's knee twisted and bent out of shape, the New York Jets (4-12 last year) became the potential division favorites because they signed Brett Favre in a brilliant P.R. move that wasn't really expected to bring in any banners (right?) but was going to sell a lot of tickets, win a few games and send the team off to their new stadium.

The biggest question all summer was what was Favre's successor going to go in the spotlight. So on Monday Night Football, against his team's arch-rival (no brighter spotlight until January), Aaron Rogers went out and threw the second highest completion percentage for a QB in his first start in history. We all assumed he would be fine back there, but this was pretty special.

The same day, Lance Armstrong, whose biography is the greatest story in the history of Sports, allegedly (and shockingly) added a chapter by planning to come out of retirement to ride five races next season for Kazakh powerhouse team Astana (including the Tour of California and Tour de France). Astana is the remnants of Armstrong's U.S. Postal/Discovery teams. He would join stars like Americans Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner, Andreas Kloden, and '07 Tour de France winner Alberto Cantador and his old team manager/strategy mastermind Johan Bruyneel. Hours later, Astana refuted the story. Armstrong has not commented at all. Who knows what to expect?

Also on Monday, the Mets lost their star closer to a season ending surgery...and a 2009 season endings surgery as well. Wagner had a little tightness in his shoulder last month and sat for a few days. He came back and pitched again (not too well) and said it had returned. The expectation was that he would be rested for as long as possible and then ramped up for the playoffs. Maybe that's true, but it will be next year's playoffs.

I suppose Boston fans should have seen at least the Brady-shocker coming, given their history. Maybe the tide has turned. The Sports Gods gave some of the most obnoxious loser-fans an amazing stretch with Super Bowl wins, World Series wins and an NBA title, but they (predictably) weren't grateful and turned into some of the most obnoxious winner-fans. I'd hate to be David Ortiz right now, because you can almost certainly predict he's going down next.

All that said, it is nice to know that there are some things in Sports that are as regular as the sunset. Like the Raiders not just losing, but being an embarrassment. Thank you Oakland Raiders, for a little stability in a shaky world.

*the best team would be the one that beat them, your Super Bowl Champion New York Giants.

The Collapse Of The Year (And It Doesn't Involve The Mets!)

I am not sure what I am happier about in regards to this Lakers-Celtics Game 4. For one thing, the Lakers lost, thus all but clinching a series lost. That is fantastic. But because it happened, it kinda washes clean the memory of the Mets' third consecutive save blown by Billy Wagner yesterday. Also related to the Mets, the word "collapse" has been used to describe my beloved baseball team's 2007 season quite a bit, but I think the Lakers just put a new trademark on the word. And finally, I wasn't at home for the second half, so I have it TiVo-ed, so I get to watch every Jack Nicholson shot with relish as Lamar Odom shrivels into a tiny, little ball.

I watched the first half at home and was not thrilled with what I was watching. To be honest, it did not seem out of reach that the Celts would get back into it. They had a 12-0 run in the second, and there was simply no way that the shooting percentage could stay as high for the Lakers or as low for the Celtics. But then Kobe Bryant hadn't made a single hoop yet either.

So at halftime, I set the game to record and left for my Ultimate league game (in which we stomped on the team of a huge jerk, closing the game on a 14-5 run). My intent was to not listen to the radio and not find out the score so I could go home and watch Game 4 after my game. Of course midway through our second half, someone yelled out, "What? At home? No way!"

News got around that the Lakers had collapsed (see, I used it) and all I could think of was how fun it would be to watch it when I got home now that I know what was coming, and that what was coming would make me very, very happy. On the way home from my game (and the ensuing team trip to a bar), I listened intently to AM570 - the Lakers' broadcast station - as callers tried to make sense of their lives in the wake of this collapse. "We would have won with Bynum." "At least the Spurs didn't win it." "Garnett may win the title, but Kobe is still the MVP" (which is probably what Kobe is thinking too).

This weekend I am working at the Special Olympics in Long Beach, and thus missing out on the free tickets my wife just told me she got at work yesterday for the U.S. Open (ouch). But during those hour car-rides down and back, I will get to listen as all the L.A. sports radio guys' heads implode. I cannot wait to hear Vic the Brick Jacobs choke this one down. He may honestly be dead.

Of course the bad news in that the obnoxious Bostonians get to enjoy a title (it is a foregone conclusion now, right?), but I think it means less to them than the Patriots winning the Super Bowl would have, so I take considerable solace in the fact that my Giants screwed that up for them.