Jon Laging, Sports talk

Predicting is fun, not necessarily accurate and helpful, but fun. People make predictions all the time, sometimes based on facts, sometimes not. We predict that Johnny would like a bike for Christmas. Lo and behold, we were right. Not too difficult to predict as Johnny has been asking for a bike for months. But sometimes we don’t have that kind of information and predictions become wobbly.

Criswell of &8220;Criswell-Predicts&8221; was a gentleman mentalist in the 60s, whose career was based on predictions of the future. He was quite popular for a period of time and appeared often on national TV, especially the Johnny Carson show. He would rattle off predictions and how they had came true. Of course, if you make enough predictions some of them are bound to be right. A funny line occurred one night when Joey Bishop was hosting the Carson show. Criswell was introduced as &8220;Criswell-Predicts&8221; and Bishop opened with &8220;Well, Mr. Predicts.&8221; &8220;No, No,&8221; said Criswell.

Nostradamus was a physician and astrologer living in the 16th century, dying in 1566 after publishing many centuries of quatrains concerning the future. A quatrain is simply a four line poem and a century is 100 of them. Here is one of his prophecies:

Beasts ferocious with hunger will swim across the river;

The greater part of the region will be against Hister,

The great one will cause it to be dragged in an iron cage,

When the German child will observe nothing.

You might interpret the first line that the German nation was struggling to recover after WWI. Hister could be Hitler. The Iron cage could refer to the Iron Curtain. And the German people didn’t understand what Hitler was doing. That’s just a quick and dirty interpretation and I’m sure that Nostradamus scholars have a much more learned view. However, one can see how Nostradamus has his followers.

A more up to date and scientific group are the futurists. Futurists will set up tools of foresight, scenario building, and insights. That still sounds like the left brain is used an awful lot, but it’s said that a good futurist will also include facts and spin them into the future.

I imagine a futurist can begin with few facts, spin a scenario and predict that Coach Brad Childress is not the answer to the Viking’s problems. So far we have found that Childress does not know a whole lot about human relations. Supposedly, he is part of a troika, or perhaps a better way of putting it, one of the legs of a three-legged stool that the Viking foundation rests upon. He was in part responsible for, or at least agreed to, the hiring of Fran Foley. Foley was hired in a rush and it appears the Vikings had no idea of what they were getting.

Prior to that, he was responsible for giving away All-Pro Duante Culpepper. You remember Culpepper, he was the only Viking accused that was acquitted in the love boat scandal. Perhaps Culpepper was dismissed because he did not kowtow to Childress.

Childress has offended the Minneapolis sportswriters. That was a dumb move, for a big-time coach has enough problems without the hometown newspapers on his back.

Projecting his future moves into a scenario which include his strengths and weaknesses, futurists might tell you that Childress will have a difficult tenure as the Viking’s coach if he continues on the same path.

I do predict a positive moment lying ahead for Childress. The law of averages are bound to catch up with the Viking coach and he will do something right. That’s kind of a small prediction, but it’s based on a truth. The law of averages.