Pep Rally

We have done gone full circle and returned to high school, in that musty smelling gymnasium.

We’re not analyzing. We’re not thinking. We’re cheerleading. Pom-poms aloft, smiles painted on, shouting in unison because that’s what the crowd is doing. Social media, television, podcasts, pregame shows, handicapping panels—every last one of them has traded insight for enthusiasm. One bit, two bit, three bits a dollar, everybody stand up and holler. It’s not discourse anymore. It’s a pep rally.

They cheer for their favorite trainers and jockeys. They cheer for their tickets, their props, their preordained outcomes. They cheer inside their handicapping discussions, which is rather like bringing a kazoo into a library and calling it music. And you know what that makes them? Cheerleaders. Not analysts. Not students of probability. Cheerleaders.

The age of information is over. Data still exists, of course—but only as a costume on Hawaiian Fridays. It’s dressed up, selectively applied, trimmed and tailored to flatter a narrative.

Reality?

Oh, reality has been politely escorted out the back door, and kicked to the curb. Now we live on stats without context, like 'this QB is undefeated when he wears a nike undershit and adidads footwear', records without substance, yes, you are 12-4, but your strength of opponets is a .380 in percentage, 'highlights without meaning, because that's what cheerleaders only see.

And yet, all you have to do—truly—is listen. Objectively. That word is the key. Objectivity. Because cheerleading is never neutral. It is always loyal to one entity, one horse, one team, one story, blindly.

Opinions now change weekly. Sometimes race to race. Every week power rankings, global rankings, fixated on the past, not the future, what does it mean when a horse is 2nd on a Kentucky Derby list in January, and 10th in March. The populace has grown… cultish. Fixated. There is a word or condition, obsessive and compulsive.....

They fall in love with a horse, a team, a person—and no matter how poorly it performs, excuses bloom like weeds. Meanwhile, the overlooked contender, the one that fits, the one that is statistically just as viable, stands quietly in the corner, ignored. Not because it can’t win—but because it doesn’t belong to the cult, to the masses.

Propaganda matters. Say something often enough, loudly enough, confidently enough, and people will believe it. Unless—unless—you possess a strong constitution and a refreshing lack of insecurity.

Ah yes, insecurity. Modern propaganda feeds on it. It whispers, What if you’re wrong and everyone else is right? And just like that, value disappears. Underlaid horses. Inflated teams. Manufactured certainty. Until, inevitably, reality arrives—unimpressed and uninvited—and no amount of cheerleading can stop it.

Then comes the shock. The excuses. The disbelief. Because the anointed one failed.

Here’s the inconvenient truth: in racing, the favorite wins roughly 33% of the time. Three-point-three out of ten. Thirty out of a hundred. Which means—brace yourself—seventy percent of the time, they are wrong. Seven out of ten. Yet we cheer regardless, not because reality supports us, but because we are terrified of being wrong. And some—some don’t even want to be right. Being wrong makes them feel something. Alive. That’s what it has come to for some of our brothers and sisters.

Me? I live to be right. To cash. To win. Not to brag. Not to say I told you so. But for that quiet, delicious moment of internal satisfaction—the knowledge that I trusted my process and it paid me in full.

Today, people share opinions not to enlighten, but to be followed. To be admired. Clicks. Likes. Validation. That’s the currency. I prefer fulfillment and cold hard cash. A sound product. Sustainable success, longevity and the rest tends to follow anyway.

You’ve noticed them, haven’t you? The ones who document every bite they eat, every step they take, every feeling they feel. Handicappers posting tickets not because they want you to win, but because they want applause after the fact. A man posts a $3,800 Pick 5 ticket on a Wednesday at Keeneland, struts like he’s cracked the code of the universe—and then, in the same breath, asks others to buy in. P.T. Barnum, somewhere, is laughing himself hoarse.

And when the ticket dies in the second leg? Silence. A dignified vanishing act worthy of David Copperfield status.

Here’s the delicious irony: by posting your ticket, you’re hurting your own price. Perhaps you could have been one of five winners. Instead, congratulations—you’re one of twenty. Your $5,000 score becomes $1,000. You didn’t lose because you were wrong. You lost because you needed affirmation. You sacrificed four thousand dollars on the altar of attention. Bravo. You’ve cheerleaded yourself toward extinction and bankrupcy.

The same disease afflicts charity. Those who donate quietly? I respect them. Those who donate loudly, trumpet in hand, demanding applause? That’s not generosity. That’s vanity dressed in virtue. Propaganda of the self.

I admire the ones who don’t boast about the horses they own, the teams they love, the opinions they hold. Be a fan, certainly—but for heaven’s sake, remember this: cheerleading is always about you.

In today's world to use an example the Kentucky Derby rush, and the NFL playoffs.

In the NFL, the hot team being the focus of the cheerleaders, is the Jacksonville Jaguars and the New England Patriots, one of them or both could very well lose in the divisional round this weekend, but you hear people right now, the pep rallies are in full force, and there are teams you wouldn't even know are in the playoffs by the lack of propaganda.

In the Kentucky Derby scene, there is a specific favorite, Ted Noffey, and I hear he has been sick and not like a little snot but something more serious, he hasn't had a work in the last 60 days. I think that's being kept hush-hush, because lord have mercy, its a national security threat if it gets out.

Cheerleaders are the last to know something, and as we seen in some cases, the first to know, but bury it like a dog and bone in the backyard, so they can benefit from it, case and point when Dortmund going in the 2015 Kentucky Derby had colic two weeks before and mainstream media individuals and on air personalities of a popular ADW show, opted to keep it to themselves for their own benefit. We all wondered why a usually robust Dortmund showed up in a greyhound costume sans 200 pounds. You can say 'oh that's racing', but in reality more like insider trading.

If you watch NFL shows hoping to get a glimpse of your favorite team, your favorite team better be the Bears, Patriots and Jaguars nowadays that's it. The other teams really don't exist, until they do, and victory thrusts them into the spotlight and boom they rise in the rankings and attention.

True success is measured internally. In humility. In satisfaction. In results that don’t require a spotlight. For some there is no such as true success, they are bad judge of characters, talent and make their predicition via kaleidoscope glasses, in racing and sports you need to be able to identify those indviduals, and make sure you are not on their sidelines.

You can be a fine horseplayer. A thoughtful sports fan. A dangerous thinker, but when you start cheerleading you just end up in your old gymnasium a hollerin'