Ramblings from the Ultimate Sports Sentimentalist

First of all, I’d like to announce that today marks the one year anniversary of “The Ramblings of the Ultimate Sports Sentimentalist” blog.  I just want to thank the readers who have taken the time to read my material over the past year.  It has been very much appreciated.  Now, let’s move on to the bad news of the day and that is the release of this year’s disappointment picks.  Several publications, including Phil Steele, produce annual surprise picks for teams who they think will do better than expected.  However, I don’t know of any expert predictions that do the inverse by picking teams who they believe will disappoint.  I think the reason why is that they don’t want to stir up too much controversy by upsetting fan bases.  In fact, often times publications will go out of their way to find something nice to say about teams that they are predicting to be horrible.  It’s sort of a form of political correctness if you will, and I do not shy away from being politically incorrect.  Therefore, I will produce my 4th annual disappointment picks for you to enjoy.  So far, my best picks have been Washington in 2007, Michigan in 2008, and Arizona State last year.  Below you will see a listing of these disappointment teams followed by my predictions for each and an average ranking of “expert” publications such as Athlon, Phil Steele, Sporting News, Rivals, and others.  The teams are ordered based on the relative disparity between my picks and the experts’ average ,while also taking into account the significance of the pick.  The numbers in parentheses in the third column represent the numerical difference between my pick and that of the experts, both nationally and within each team’s conference.