Wilson, Russell and the lessons of hype and prognostication

Each and every year I swear I am not going to get sucked into national signing day. It occurs every February 6. So, usually, I hold out until February 1, and then I gradually creep into it. I am like a small kid who is afraid of the closet and what might lurk within. I slowly peek into the door, opening it wider, and wider until I see the full contents and it is no longer scary. On February 1 the door of interest is cracked. By February 6 I have thrown the door wide open. Now this is an affliction that targets men (primarily) from the South. As a child of NOLA and Baton Rouge, following recruiting is like a recurring arthritis. And by February 6 I am in a full blown episode. I start trolling the internet late at night (like I did late Monday night) to find videos that programs like LSU show to young men they are recruiting into the program. If you have 7 minutes this is my favorite one from this year - it is really well produced and an unbelievably smart sales pitch. But that is not the point of this blog. That video above, in spite of its quality, is not why I write today. In fact, I write to be critical of it in some ways. I write today to share this tweet with you, a tweet from Darren Rovell, one of the smartest writers I follow or know. Darren writes and tweets about the business side of sports, the dark and cloudy stuff we rarely see. I follow him because to understand most of the men in our churches (and many of the women) I need to have a grasp of the landscape of sport. Here is the tweet:

Russell Wilson, 2 star recruit, not ranked in state twitter.com/Sports_On_Tap/…(H/T @sports_on_tap)
— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) February 7, 2013

What do you notice about it? My friends from ACC territory and from N.C. State know exactly who this is. But he is Russell Wilson, who is currently the starting quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. He is Russell Wilson, who was only two minutes short of starting in the Super Bowl. He is Russell Wilson, who was, at the age of 23 or so, on the pregame coverage of the Super Bowl because of the strength of his intellect, his skills of analysis, and his undeniable success at the hardest position, in the hardest game, in the toughest league in the country. And here is the thing about the tweet. It is from when Russell was at the Collegiate school, a prep school in Richmond where I used to coach 7th grade football in the 1990's. The two stars above his name mean the experts expected him to do nothing in college. The two stars mean that the experts thought he had no professional potential. And yet they were wrong. Totally wrong. How often do we let an initial ranking, hype, or prediction color our assumptions about outcomes? Do we give up when we think the world has given our faith two stars? When our prayers seems to have earned a failing grade? When it seems that faith is two small, don't believe the hype.