Ten Unassailable and Correct Predictions for the Rest of the Sports Year – Fan Opinion

(The following was written by a life-long Chicago Bears, Bulls, Cubs, and Blackhawks fan, me, which would tempt you to believe that you have a shot at cracking any of the predictions below…and that’s just where he wants you. Flame away, trolls, because I’ve just lit the blue light for the comments section – two comments for the price of one!)

So January has come and gone, leading one to believe that I am a little late with the whole prediction thing.

Paraphrasing Gandalf, a predictor is never late, nor is he early. He predicts precisely when he means to, and he’ll stop referring to himself in the third person from now on.

This is a straight-forward challenge. I am going to lay down ten irrefutable, unassailable predictions for the rest of the year. Every one of them will come true. Every one of them will be as correct on December 31, 2012, as they are today. Guided by the muse of always being right about sports, I will speak truth to power and lay the smack down on the future.

My predictions can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with, and, like Blake Griffin , they absolutely will not stop until they have dumped a cradle of filth (that’d be a cool band name, eh?) on the heads of all non-believers. So there’s your choice: believe in me or believe in that oops upside ya head.

You have been warned.

10. The Heavyweight championship of the year will occur in the UFC.

If you can name the top five heavyweight boxers not named Klitschko, you are either a gambler turned state’s evidence and living in witness protection, or the leg-breaker assigned to find the rat and, ahh, alter the trajectory of his testimony.

Quick: name five UFC heavyweight contenders.

Junior Dos Santos, Alistair Overeem, Cain Velasquez, Cheick Kongo, Frank Mir.

One will note that I didn’t even have to conjure the ghost of the recently-departed Brock Lesnar to round out my five with fighters you’ve actually heard of that have actually fought for a single championship. I’m using heavyweights to prove a point here, because the UFC is easily outclassing boxing in every weight division across the board. Speaking of which…

9. Manny Pacquio will not fight Floyd Mayweather Jr.

This fight should have happened two years ago. It would not have restored boxing to the glory days of the 1980’s, but it certainly would have lifted the sport’s profile for a brief moment. However, the fight that should have already happened began shooting itself in the foot so many times that any lingering interest will have been long drained if the two ever eventually face each other in the ring. It started with Mayweather ducking Pacquio behind a cloud of chicken-hearted pre-nups. It ended with both fighters damaging their reputations with less-than-sterling performances as both camps warily circled each other and a potentially-massive payout on pay-per-view. There’s a better chance that Mayweather will end the year behind bars than this fight ever taking place, and there’s no chance the fight happens this year. Zero chance. Just like…

8. No one will fill out a perfect NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament bracket.

Yes, I threw myself a bone here. Sue me.

I don’t need odds. I only know the soul-killing agony of watching some team I’d scratched out in the first round move through my entire Midwestern bracket like some new bio-engineered pathogen bent on destroying all of humanity. Similarly…

7. The California Angels will win the World Series…

…and the citizenry of St. Louis will rise up, pitch-forks sharpened and torches ablaze, and reduce St. Louis Cardinals’ GM John Mozeliak’s house to rubble. Mozeliak himself will have gone into protective custody moments after Albert Pujols hoists the MVP trophy over his head after his series-clinching heroics in Game 5, and will find himself roommates with none other than Jim Irsay, because…

6. The Indianapolis Colts will suck with Luck.

Peyton Manning will have been shown the door with all of the awkwardness of Joe Montana’s eventual ouster from San Francisco, only to find himself vainly calling signals behind an unfamiliar center. Stanford’s Andrew Luck, the biggest can’t-miss prospect since His Neckness Himself came out of Tennessee once upon a time, will eventually revive the fortunes of the franchise, but not this season. Rather, the biggest surprise will be…

5. Tim Tebow will lead the Denver Broncos to the best record in the AFC.

He won’t win the Super Bowl (that’d be a prediction for 2013, and Drew Brees will have a better day anyway), but he will drag the Broncos to home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

Don’t believe me?

Ask yourself: what is Tim Tebow doing right now?

I can tell you exactly what he’s doing. He wakes up in the morning, reads his bible, kisses his mom on the cheek, and then goes out and completely devours professional football for the rest of the day. He is spending hours working on his passing motion (someone should ask the Pittsburgh Steelers about that suspect arm of his), he is watching every frame of every piece of film available, and he is studying the Bronco playbook like it was…the…bible…

Last season, he started cold. The labor impasse shut down any off-season development, and he opened camp so far down the roster that miners in Chile celebrated when he finally got the start. This season, he’ll have the full faith and backing of the Denver Broncos coaching staff, including a team president that might know a thing or two about being the quarterback of the moment. He will not rest. He will not sleep. He will not date, or, if he does, the media will hype the relationship so out of proportion to what he’s actually doing that his success next season will seem like a shock. Don’t believe the hype. Remember what your old coach told you about the guy who was practicing harder than you right now and when you met, that guy would beat you?

That guy is Tim Tebow. All of the practice and study will pay off for him big-time. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of our next entry, because…

4. Tiger Woods will continue to not be Tiger Woods.

We will get breathless reports from a putting green at some exclusive club that Tiger’s putter is on autopilot again. We’ll hear from opponents and former swing coaches that he’s locked in again. He’ll post an occasional low round and get his name on the leaderboard and the crowd will swell in anticipation. He might even win a tournament. It won’t be a major. His game will come in fits and starts, but there will be just enough left to tease certain worldwide sports entities into plastering his image all over their evening news broadcast, but that’s all it will ever be. Tiger Woods will not win a major championship this year. However…

3. The Miami Heat will win the NBA Championship this season…

…which will only create more problems for LeBron James, because this season is not a full season. Worse, given how the acrimonious labor situation played out, what was left of the season was a truncated, limping affair with brutal scheduling that clearly favored younger teams. The first problem, of course, is that James will have to share the limelight with Dwayne Wade (with the knowledge that Wade’s first title is much more legitimate). The second problem here is that James needs his greatness affirmed over the long haul of a regular season, not back-doored through a gimmicky make-up session, and, in these ways, this championship will be blighted, a perpetual “yeah, but…” It simply won’t count.

What will count, you ask? All of the following, because…

2. Justin Verlander will break Nolan Ryan’s single-season strikeout record.

But Van, you say, snatching the whiskey from my hand, Verlander has never struck out as many as 300 batters in a season, let alone anything like the 383 that the Express sat down 1973.

Ha! I say, snatching my single-malt right back, you don’t know what I know about the Detroit Tigers this season. Here’s why the Angels will win the Series: Prince Fielder at first, and Miguel Cabrera at third. As a friend of mine from the greater metropolitan St. Louis area recently opined, “If I’m managing against the Tigers, every batter on my team is bunting.” Fielder and Cabrera might be circus freaks for hitters, but they both have the range and mobility of traffic cones at the corners. Verlander will look to his right at Kung Fu Panda lumbering into position down the left field line, look to his left at Kung Fu Panda 2 wobbling over to the hole between first and second, and decide right then and there to take matters into his own hands. He might strike out 400 guys before it’s all said and done, because there is No. Way. he lets an infield grounder turn into two bases on his watch.

But the story of the year:

1. The Ed O’Bannon lawsuit finally destroys the NCAA.

This is the straw that breaks the monopoly’s back. The NCAA couldn’t win this case if they were able to clone a leading Franken-lawyer out of dead Johnny Cochran and fictional Harvey Specter. Once the beast is finally slain, the networks will scramble to renegotiate with the association that rises from the ashes, one that will give us a 16-team football playoff in Division 1A, payment for players in revenue-producing sports, restricted free agency for players, and legal representation for players. Sure, big-time football and basketball will continue to be feeder leagues for their professional brethren, but the process will be much more straightforward and honest, and the money finally getting disbursed to players may encourage them to stay in school for an extra semester or two, especially if they know they are bound for the next level but not with an elite signing bonus waiting for them.

And nothing will be more fun than watching the NCAA suddenly backed into settlements amounting to billions as former athletes join class-action suits to get their overdue share of a pie they should have had a long time ago.

So, there you have it. Ten gold-plated predictions that you can bet the 401k on.

I could be wrong, of course…but I’m not.

Sources:

Yahoo! Sports

Baseball-Reference.com

Youtube.com


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