Just Don’t Call Me Nostra—Dan—Us
Gary from the Peanut Gallery has surmised from the blog I posted yesterday that I think Duke will beat Wake this Saturday. Thanks Gary for providing an opening to a confession I make every season along about this time.
This whole business about predicting outcomes of games is something I’ve never quite grasped. My befuddlement stems, I guess, from the fact I don’t take predictions—whether made by me or anyone else for that matter—as seriously as others seem to.
I recognize that by making a prediction I’m putting my knowledge and expertise on the line, and that’s not what bothers me. I’ve made a blame fool of myself many times in my career, and will assuredly do so again. We’re talking, after all, about the guy who picked N.C. State to win the Atlantic Division last season. And I’m not the least bit consoled by the excuse that I had to make that call before Nate Irving got hurt and had to sit out the season.
We give our predictions in the Journal’s annual football section that comes out before the season, only because I haven’t been able to talk the guys who make these decisions out of it. This year I picked the Deacons to finish 7-5. Someone asked me if that’s how I truly felt, or was I sugar-coating it to curry favor with the home fan base. Let’s just say I’m not going out of my way to invite trouble, but I go back to the original point. I don’t know how the Deacons are going to finish and neither does anyone else.
But when I see these guys on television so adamantly dead-certain that Team A is going to trounce Team B, or vice versa, and going on and on about it until the testosterone is overflowing, and the fans embracing those who picked their side and railing against those who didn’t, my question is. . . who cares? Not me. The game is going to be played. We’re all going to find out who wins in time. I’m willing to wait.
My thing is to cover Wake and tell you what’s happening and what I see. I have absolutely no problem with predicting that Michael Campanaro is going to have a big season, or that the offensive line is going to have to jell for the Deacons to fulfill expectations. It’s just that every time I try to apply all that knowledge to the question of whether Wake will beat Duke, I come back to the same conclusion.
I have no idea.
Everybody gets some right and everybody gets some wrong. And for every great call you make in life, like Wake would beat Georgia Tech in the 2006 ACC football championship because Riley Skinner was a much better quarterback than Reggie Ball, or that Kentucky would beat Duke in the 1998 South Regional Basketball championship because it was apparent to anyone paying attention that Steve Wojciechowski would never be able to keep Wayne Turner out of the lane, along will come a game like the one played at what was then called Groves Stadium on Sept. 9, 2006.
If there is anyone who watched Wake Forest pull that 14-13 victory over Duke out of its, let’s just say back pocket, and then predicted by sundown that day that one of those teams would win the ACC championship and the other would go 0-12, I can only hope you were smart enough to cash in. And I’m glad your yacht has wireless so you can read this.