Even the Sports World Missed This One

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It’s not so easy to predict the next resident of this place

As our country is still trying to digest the results of the Presidential election, and pollsters and mainstream media remain in shock after collectively “blowing it,” the predictive world of sports took a punch to the gut as well. You see, there have been a handful of reliable old stand-byes in sports that have stood the test of time when it comes to letting us know who the next resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will be. But now decades of “sports accuracy” have fallen by the way-side, along with Mrs. Clinton’s White House hopes.

Let’s start with college football and the SEC in particular. Leave it to Alabama to not follow script and lose as they were supposed to do, as they spit in the eye of tradition with a 10-0 victory over LSU on November 5th. With their shutout win, the Crimson Tide broke a decades long streak of predictive election accuracy – you see in every election since 1984 leading up to this most recent one, the Democratic nomination took the Oval Office when Alabama won their match-up with the hated Tigers, and the Republicans triumphed in years that LSU pulled off a victory. That streak, unlike Bama’s current win streak, is now toast. I blame Nick Saban of course…..

Trump won despite the Cubs victory in the Series

Next up let’s take a look at MLB and the World Series outcome. We might as well track this one back to the last time the Cubs won the Series, 1908. Since then, in any World Series that went the full seven games, 68% of the time the National League emerged victorious, so did the Democrats. But I guess in a year the Cubs and Indians play for the title you can throw the history books out the window.

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Now let’s check out the NFL, and what is perhaps the most famous predictive trend of all, the so-called “Redskins Rule.” Famous perhaps because it’s a trend based on a Washington team, or maybe just because it has been startling accurate, but either way it took a hit this election year as well. It a nutshell the “rule” says the incumbent party wins the election when the Skins win their last home home game before the polls close, and the challenging party wins when Washington loses. Since 1940 (when the Redskins moved to Washington), the outcome of that game has correctly predicted the outcome of the election 17 out of 18 times.  Well make that 17 out of 19 now. The Skins took care of business 27-20 over the Eagles in their last pre-election home game on Oct. 16. And Donald Trump thanks them.