Sportswriters need to have short memories. They make a lot of predictions and a lot of those predictions are wrong. The trick, I guess, is to maintain your confidence, act like you know what you're talking about.
Think of all the time and mental energy which goes into these NFL picks every week. Everybody said the Seahawks could not rebound from their Monday night defeat and the Cowboys could not lose following their Monday night comeback. Everybody was wrong. Everbody is always wrong.
Not always wrong, but it's just 50%-50%. Yet every week, they do it again. Confidently and passionately explaining why the Colts will cover the spread, or whatever. Tracking trends and making bizarre connections between modern-day teams and players from the past who just happened to wear the same uniform: "The Packers are 2-5 against the spread since 1975 following a Monday Night loss by ten points or more." Huh?
Over the course of time, they have no more success than a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a board. I don't gamble on the NFL, but if I did, I'd have stopped paying attention to these self-proclaimed experts a long time ago.
Peter Gammons is not always wrong, it's impossible to be always wrong. But his supposed insights into the inner workings of baseball have about the same hit rate as a blindfolded monkey reporting on the Hot Stove League. Pick a random team, pick a random player, report the player might be going to the team. You can literally pick just about any Gammons archived article and laugh about how incorrect he was.
So where does this kind of sloppy reporting get you in sportswriting? The Hall of Fame.
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