Playoff Prophets
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
- Proverbs 27:1
Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?
- Lamentations 3:37
It’s that time of year again.
The post-Christmas gray of January gets punctuated with all of the excitement, stress and rabid fandom of football playoff season.
Thirty-two teams have each competed in seventeen games across the span of four months to reach this point and all of the commentary, narrative and analysis are brought to an absolute standstill as teams get eliminated from contention one-by-one.
And it is from this deluge of commentary that I wish to draw a quick pinch of insight for us.
One of the more fascinating elements of professional sports is the commentariat that accompanies it. As the teams play the games, the narrative of each season unfolds in real time. The days leading up to each weekend weave a story and the days immediately after tell a tale.
“Here’s what’s going to happen!” is immediately followed by, “Here’s what happened and why.”
Whether those two narratives agree with each other doesn’t seem to matter much as predictions are made without any risk of job or financial loss. The well-dressed and well-paid commentators make their predictions for each and every matchup and there are no consequences for them if they are proven completely wrong. In fact, there is such a lack of accountability for these alleged experts that I myself can’t remember the last time I saw a network keeping track of their commentators’ correct and incorrect prediction records (as they used to do.)
Add to this weekly storm of speculative discussion the relatively new dynamic of legalized sports gambling (and all of the odds, favorites and underdogs that accompany it) and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the ultimate purpose of the leagues was actually to provide nothing more than material for all of the would-be prophets to make a profit.
And yet.
Injuries occur. Fumbles and dropped passes and interceptions happen. Players make plays. Expectations go both exceeded and unmet. An untold number of factors come into play that prove the prognosticators wrong far more often than right.
And so the narrative shifts. More arguments are had in split screen television studios, on podcasts and in the digital arena of social media.
But does anyone take stock of just how wrong they were? Or does the mad rush to make a prediction continue unabated? After all, there’s attention to be held and money to be made. Let’s not let something as simple as our complete inability to tell the future stop us.
I was born and raised a Kansas City Chiefs fan. The last few years have been more-or-less a blast for me within the realm of professional football.
Last week I heard a football analyst I enjoy listening to (who has forgotten more about the game than I will ever know) predict that the LA Chargers would not only beat the Houston Texans in their Wild Card matchup, but go on to defeat the Chiefs on their home field in the divisional round.
Well.
I remember that prediction. And I’ll be listening for this particular analyst’s admission of just how wrong he was. But I won’t be listening with any level of expectation.
People are remarkably comfortable with declaring what’s going to happen in the future. Not what they think will happen or what probably, possibly, could happen. No, people will look you straight in the eyes and tell you what’s going to happen with all the confidence in the world and then not lose a moment’s sleep about it when they’re proven to be wrong.
We fancy ourselves experts. A few of us actually are. But it occurs to me that the more you truly know, regardless of the field, the more you realize how little you actually know. True knowledge is accompanied by humility and humility prevents a person from getting out over their skis when it comes to things they can’t possibly know.
Like the future.
The unknown future reminds each and every one of us of the lack of control we have over our lives and the world in which we live. One of my mentors was fond of saying that men are never more insecure than when they feel out of control. Maybe the reason we make such strong declarations about the future is to try to demonstrate some form of control over it: in order to quell a sense of insecurity, conscious or otherwise, we attempt to deploy our knowledge and expertise in a way that will demonstrate control.
Whatever the case may be, such behavior is the height of foolishness. The fourth chapter of James exhorts us:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (vs. 13-16)
The sovereign will of God reigns supreme over all of our knowledge, expertise and predictive powers. God alone knows the future because He created it and lives within it now. If we think we can see into that which only God knows, we sin in arrogance.
So have fun with your sports predictions. But always remember: there’s a reason they play the game.
Resist the temptation to write the story beforehand, whether it be in sports or geopolitics or your own life or the lives of your children. Or anything. Instead, walk in humility according to the sovereign will of God, acknowledging Him in all things.
And be man enough to take the L when you pick wrong. If that’s too much to stomach, keep your mouth shut.
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A fool multiplies words, though no man knows what is to be, and who can tell him what will be after him?
- Ecclesiastes 10:14
Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
- Proverbs 17:28