Every day after class, I open the door to my dorm, open my laptop and go to SportsCenter online. I think to myself, “Maybe today will be different. Maybe the experts won’t find excuses to doubt my beloved Denver Broncos. Maybe they will say something different than they did yesterday.”

Alas, I am dismayed. Turns out the experts said the same thing as yesterday, finding yet another reason to deny me my satisfaction. I go to forums for fans like myself, and day after day we complain about the perception of our teams in the media. Analysts say something about a given team, and sports nuts will complain about these predictions as if they will have a dire effect on their teams’ fortunes.

Why do sports fans allow this to happen? These experts say the same thing avid fans do. Jamie Dukes, an NFL network analyst, has more than 16,000 followers on Twitter who are mostly there to tell him how wrong they think he is.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter what Dukes had to say. Just because he said the Seattle Seahawks will win zero games does not mean it will happen. Analysts’ predictions change nothing on the field, and if Dukes “hates” a particular team, then let him be. If fans don’t like what an expert has to say, then they don’t have to watch the show.

Sports are unpredictable — that’s a fact. A sports expert’s job is to try to predict these games and statistics. There is no reason for fans to take it upon themselves to get upset over these meaningless predictions by people who don’t play the games. In 2008, the ESPN staff picked the Dallas Cowboys to win the Super Bowl, yet they did not even make the playoffs. The Tennessee Titans were ranked No. 7 before week one at the beginning of the 2009 season, and now they are ranked No. 30, with no wins to date. At the release of the weekly power rankings, a team’s message board shows multiple threads commenting on a team’s latest rank. It is a safe assumption to say roughly one-third of an NFL team’s fans will complain about disrespect when the rankings come out. Lucky for the fans, ESPN proves that when they revisit the weekly rankings, they do not matter and are always subject for debate.

So why do fans go crazy over these opinions? Nothing an expert says will change what happens on the playing field. Experts have their own opinions, just like every fan has his or her own opinion. The only difference is the experts get paid for theirs. Why bombard an “expert’s” Twitter account with hate mail when it doesn’t matter? I suppose this is what fans do. When there is no game to watch and all sports junkies think about is sports, there is nothing left to do but berate analysts’ opinions. Even if nothing a fan can do will change the events that happen on the playing field, it is worth a shot. Fans, whether passive or avid, are passionate about what they feel is right.

But then again, I am guilty of all these things. I watch SportsCenter religiously. When the experts say the Broncos are a fluke, I get upset and complain with fans like myself. We all have our little circle of comfort, and it works for us. It’s funny that this happens, because when the experts seem to pick my team, we always lose. So maybe, deep down, I don’t want them to pick my team. But on the surface, I want respect from them, even if it doesn’t matter one bit.