Many things have changed since I left the sports department more than six years ago. As a reader, I loved seeing predictions of the final scores of the week's big football games -- high school, college and pro games.

When I was a kid sportswriter, I was sitting in the pressbox next to Jack Polancy, longtime Morning News sports editor, the night that he predicted that East High would defeat Cathedral Prep's football team. In the game's closing seconds, as the Ramblers wrapped up a hard-fought victory, Prep's fans began chanting, "How's that, Fat Jack!" They yelled it over and over, and then they began throwing coins and pieces of debris into the pressbox. Some of it came whizzing by, and when it struck you, it hurt. But Polancy loved it.

Later, he used it as the fictional start of his crazy female computer, Changeable Sue, who took over as his official prognosticator "after those nasty Prep boys broke my crystal ball."

In those years, predicting football games was serious business. When you got it wrong, fans would hate you. But that was half the fun. After a while, many sports departments stopped offering predictions, saying that it put too much pressure on the kids, etc., etc. I always thought they'd probably grown tired of taking the flak.

Anyway, once I became a sports editor, we started running predictions of practically every sport. Some fans -- usually of the teams we predicted would lose -- would be sore, but I was convinced that most readers enjoyed it. I still feel that way.

Matt Martin, our sports managing editor, now offers even more predictions on football games than we did, and, as a reader, I'm really enjoying it. Mostly, it adds to the fun of the season. Matt has taken it one more step -- far beyond what we were able to do. For instance, early in the week, predictions appear for the coming games on GoErie.com/football. I'll bet that gets the fans buzzing.

I suppose some would charge that the Erie Times-News is biased toward certain schools, but those readers would be missing the point. This exercise is about fun -- about injecting some special spirit into the excitement surrounding a big game.

Martin does it right by carrying the individual records and overall records of the staffers who are offering the predictions. That way, readers can see who knows what he's talking about. When your name and record is on the line, you can bet the prognosticators take it seriously. And, for readers, it's fun to match wits with the so-called experts.

-- Kevin Cuneo