ESPN ESP
Expanded Version of the Week 5 Newsletter Blog…
Football studio shows are fans’ ambient noise, like waves crashing or birds chirping … only the waves are a typhoon and the birds are tucans with megaphones. They talk as if they know how you watch them - getting ready in the morning, eating, before you fall asleep. If they speak with less than complete force and authority, we won’t pay attention.
Let’s figure out who we should tune in to and who we can put on mental mute. ESPN publishes a dozen “Experts” picks every week. We created a fake user for each Expert and entered all of their picks through 5 weeks. Of course, these guys don’t know they are playing Pickmoto. So their picks deserve some slack for being out of context.
As you may know, Pickmoto asks the most basic question in sports - which teams will win. There is a crowdsourced scoring system that rewards correct picks based on their popularity - the less popular, the more points. Wrong picks cost 10 points. Everyone starts with 300. Pretty straightforward.
Here is the leaderboard after Week 5:
- Seth Wickersham 569
- Chris Mortensen 538
- Adam Schefter 384
- Keyshawn Johnson 362
- Merrill Hoge 269
- Cris Carter 265
- Mike Golic 254
- Ron Jaworski 246
- Eric Allen 232
- Mark Schlereth 210
- Mike Ditka 204
- Tom Jackson 173
Special recognition to Seth Wickersham for not only repeatedly picking big upsets, but 3 times he was the lone ESPN pundit who picked the underdog: Week 5 Colts (+68), Week 3 Titans (+42), Week 2 Rams (+53). Is it a coincidence that Wickersham is the lowest profile ESPNer on the list? (BTW, he’s got the Cowboys over the Ravens this week.)
We also found it verrrrry interesting that the Top-3 are the only 3 who are not former players. That can’t be a coincidence. Keyshawn Johnson is the only former player that is an above-average picker. Wouldn’t have been our first guess, but that may be our UCLA bias.
We should mention that all dozen are well above .500 with their picks. Even Tom Jackson’s picks hit 55% of the time. Still, Pickmoto favorites (teams that have 50+% of the community’s picks) win 62% of games, better than everyone outside the Top-4.
And we’re just scratching the surface here. We’re sure there are plenty of other interesting facts that will unveil themselves as the season moves forward.
We’ll continue to update the Experts’ picks every week and publish the leaderboard in the Newsletter and on our Blog. You can pick against the ESPN Experts on Pickmoto by finding and adding them on your iPhone or iPad app.
Have any questions, comments, suggestions? Email ben@pickmoto.com.
