I my humble opinion, WinTheTrophy really forces us to take a new look at picking sport event winners. By providing the tools to take a close look at the events on a given day, you can really become a better (no pun intended) sports fan. We all know that any sport takes years to learn and even more time to understand the nuances. The timeline to a PhD is shortened if you actually played the sport, but not many people have had the chance to play a college or professional sport. But having played the sport at any level isn’t a prerequisite to becoming an expert. In fact, many so-called experts never participated in a single down, inning, minute, match or whatever it may be labeled. These experts have mastered another set of skills and their vigilance and study allows them to see things that others don’t. That’s why we value their opinions and that’s what I contend WinTheTrophy helps you to attain: a better, more enlightened, fuller, more descript, understanding of sports and the teams that play one another.

To me, understanding what happens behind the scenes is often as important as what you see in the black and white (stats). Many a team has come into a season highly ranked, populated by great recruits, returning seniors, a tested coaching staff, a reasonable schedule, but failed to even make the post-season. Why? X factors. You see a growing contingency of reporters, online bloggers, behind-the-scenes insiders, and so forth, who work assiduously to try and shed some light on what is happening in the locker room, the front office, the practice field and at the homes of the players. Television shows – like HBO’s Hard Knocks – take us through the entire pre-season; it’s during these episodes, taken as a whole, that we begin to see the complex dynamics of fielding a professional football team (let alone a successful team). Distractions abound, injuries lurk, coaching opinions fluctuate, public opinion peaks and ebbs, players’ confidence rise and plummet, money issues dominate, signings linger, agents do agent stuff, fans prognosticate and so on and so on. What you begin to understand is that building and maintaining a team at the highest level is equal parts – art, science and luck.

So back at home our lonely sports picker must sift through a litany of data, feelings and instincts to make an accurate prediction. And the good ones do just that: they objectively look at the facts, make a choice and then lay it out against their instinct and – if all factors are green-lighted – they place their pick and sit back to either muse at their genius or watch as their calculation fails miserably. However, even the losses – like in real sports or real life – teach something and those that learn something from these mistakes become better at an infinitely iterative process that ultimately helps them reduce the chance factor to a minute number (or fraction thereof). And these are the people who have evolved from the casual prognosticator into something more akin to a highly successful Wall Street trader. They are better than average and their opinions get noticed, and once they have a reputation, they must continue to perform or they will be disregarded as a fluke.

WinTheTrophy lets you develop these skills and objectively follow your development or regression. Numbers don’t lie and you can see from the categories where your talents reside and where you need improvement. Or, if you happen to be really good at one thing, WinTheTrophy shows you what that is and that, my friends, is certainly something worth knowing. So sports picking is just like commodities trading, stock picking, monetary investing and a vast array of other activities that are based on the choice of an individual who ingests a massive amount of information, makes a choice and wagers that that outcome will come to fruition. It’s infinitely difficult, perceptibly humbling and a skill that only a few can ever really master. So give it a try and see if you have the gift…you’ll never know if you don’t give it a try. I truly believe WinTheTrophy makes you learn, appreciate and ultimately become a better sports fan.