Just before the college football season kicked off, I wrote about the inevitable overreactions that would take place.

The next day, my team, the Univesity of Michigan, lost a terrible game to Notre Dame. They played poorly, and despite only losing by seven points, never really seemed to be in it.

So people overreacted.

Personally, even after just hours before highlighting the bias that we all feel to jump to conclusions, I began to prepare myself for a season with 8 or 9 wins. It just didn’t seem like Michigan was very good.

But they recovered. And now, several months into the season, Michigan stands as the fourth best team in the country, coming off three of the best wins in Michigan’s recent history strung together.

Now the question isn’t whether they can win 8 games. They’ve already done that.

The question is whether this Michigan team can make it to the playoff and stack up against Clemson or Alabama.

How quickly things change.

 

When looking back at sports, these types of things are light-hearted. It’s funny looking back at crazy things the media says and that we think after we’re proven to be so terribly wrong. It seems crazy to think that I couldn’t picture Michigan competing with Wisconsin or Penn State.

But we rarely take the time to see how this type of thinking leaks into other aspects of our lives.

How many times have we made poor decisions about potential business partners or employees because of an overreaction? How about friends and partners? Or investments?

Only when we take the time to seperate ourselves from the situation and try to view the events objectively can we make a well-informed decision.

And even then it’s tough.

-Brandon