The "What If" Scenarios

On ESPN today, college football analyst Jesse Palmer was talking about the match up tonight between 11th ranked TCU (10-2) and 9th ranked Boise State (12-0). This should be a great match up because of the teams rankings and record. About the match up, Palmer said something along the lines of this, "Boise State went undefeated and they're basically playing an undefeated team because TCU lost on a last second field goal and another time where they blew a ten point lead" Now in all fairness to Jesse Palmer, he's not the only analyst to make these type of, what I call, "What If" analysis. In fact, I'm watching PTI right now and Michael Wilbon is saying the Chicago Bears (9-6) should be 11-4 or 12-3 (because of stupid loses to Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and Carolina. To Palmer, Wilbon, and all analysts thinking of making these comparesions, STOP IT!

Yes, there are many times where a team should have won and lost. There are also many times a team should have lost and won. If this happened, then maybe, that would happen, which would lead said team to a win. Maybe a satellite fell from the sky and killed a team's star running back and quarterback the opposing team would win. Maybe if dinosaurs came back to life and killed half a team, another team would win. Maybe if a radioactive plant blew up near a stadium and gave a team superhero powers, then maybe, MAYBE, a team would win.

There are so many scenarios that could cause a team to win or lose that people should stop speculating on "What Ifs". Now it is possible that a record could lie about the strength of a particular team. There are times where a team plays their opponent very well and due to some fluke plays, said team loses. However, the team lost. It's a loss. There's nothing the team can do now to change that fact. In fact, you can make the argument that the team should have played better to avoid being in that situation where one or two fluke plays could occur that could cause said team to lose. But I digress.

So a team MAY be better than their record, but to all analysts, please don't talk about situations that might have happened. You can talk about the strengths and weaknesses of a particular team and how that might match up against their opponent. But do not, DO NOT, talk about what could have happened when predicting and talking about future games.