Pros pick the games better than anyone else.........

[cougjunkie]

I found this article from ESPN the magazine pretty interesting:

NBA analysts often describe players as "feeling it" when they're playing well. Now we know just how accurate that description is.
Researchers at Università di Roma in Italy had a group of international pros, amateurs, coaches and sportswriters watch video of someone shooting a free throw and asked them to predict whether he would make it. The pros got it right about 65% of the time, while the rest of the subjects clocked in at under 40%. Moreover, players answered before the ball began its trajectory, basing their assessments solely on shooting technique. From an evolutionary standpoint, this ability may provide an edge in deciding whether to fight or take flight…in hoops terms, whether to crash the boards or head downcourt.
As participants played the guessing game, professor Salvatore Aglioti monitored brain activity using transcranial magnetic stimulation, which measures the amplitude of the pathway that connects the motor cortex to the hand and arm muscles. He discovered that the pros felt contractions in their hands and arms while they watched the free throw try. "This indicates that the onlooker 'resonated' with the model, as if internally simulating the model's action," Aglioti says. That reaction may be caused by mirror neurons, cells in the brain that allow humans to imitate actions they see.
"We were not surprised that mirroring is involved in sports," says Aglioti. "What did surprise us is that mirror systems are not just for imitation but also for predicting the outcome of actions." Of course, whether this heightened perception is the result of their superior skill and experience or the innate cause of it is anybody's guess.

[il Padrino Ute]

I bet the sports writers did the worst.