You can almost feel it. We’re about to make that stunning leap across the calendar to September, when the most wonderful time of the year will begin. Football season. Fans are trying to decide if they need a new game-day jersey (time to toss the 4, Jets fans), beer companies are dreaming about all the money they’re going to make, and everyone and their mother has a prediction.

When you’ve been in a desert, any amount of water is precious. So while ringing out leaves for droplets of news about how good practice was today (cue AI), a brutal discovery was made: Rankings of Every Player in the NFL! Shockingly, this egomaniacally definitive list was found on the pages of ESPN.com, compiled by the good people at Scouts Inc.

According to these Experts, who allegedly made careers at one point in speculation (although they’re not doing that anymore, now are they?), DeMarcus Ware is the best player in the NFL. They cite his speed, pass-rushing moves, and increased productivity in coverage as good reasons for it. However, they have an award to determine the best player in the league. It’s called the MVP. They even have one specifically for defensive players, tastefully named the Defensive Player of the Year award. Ware won neither of these, and his team didn’t make the playoffs.

Five spots behind Ware is James Harrison, a guy who did win the Defensive Player of the Year Award and whose team did win the Super Bowl. This would presumably give credit to the list if it wasn’t by the Scouts. ESPN lacquers credibility onto these authors by claiming they used to be professional scouts, the same profession that didn’t draft Harrison in 2002. To make matters worse, Harrison was cut by two of the best scouting teams in the league (Pittsburgh and Baltimore) and did a stint with the Rhein Fire! Does that sound like anyone should listen to these people?

After the vitriol subsided (and it did, after a discussion of cheeseburgers broke out in the office), the dusty remains were of a question: what constitutes a prediction in sports? And better yet, what happened to predictions?

Predictions are part of what make sports fun, primarily because there’s no way to know. If predictions meant anything, the 2007 New England Patriots would be considered the greatest team of all time. Predictions are made for bragging rights after the fact, not to be settled in a vacuum. ESPN is constantly trying to do the latter, making bold statements and trying to prove them as concrete law even though they could totally be washed away when the actual season starts.

This is a part of an epidemic of information, of fantasy football rankings somehow correlating with actual games. But more important than the amateurs are the pros. Billions of dollars is at stake in the games of player selection and scouting. Being right about a player means hitting a five number fire-bet on a craps table. Being wrong means you’re fired and working at a taqueria in Van Nuys. The same is true now with sports media. If ESPN’s pundits aren’t right, then why would any of them matter? The irony in all of this is a zero-tolerance for failure policy and a track record of hiring professional failures (Herm Edwards, Matt Millen, etc). This is not to cast unfair judgement; both men were fired for doing subpar jobs this last season. The end results justify their monikers. DeMarcus Ware might be the best player in the league and he can prove it by leading the Cowboys to the Super Bowl and hoisting an MVP trophy. Call that the old fashioned way.