One of the great pleasures futurists traditionally enjoy is the lack of follow-up by anyone on the seer’s outrageous prognostications. This generally holds true whether the oracle gives a speech, lectures to a class, records a podcast or writes it down for SBJ readers.

No one comes around years later to point out where the mystic’s confronting predictions were flawed or less than informed.

Case in point: For its July 22, 1991, cover story (“2001: A Fan’s World — Watching Sports in the 21st Century”), Sports Illustrated asked one of its own highly regarded columnists, the late William Oscar Johnson (a writer who dedicated much of his work to the sport of downhill skiing), to look 10 years ahead and tell its readership what to expect.

Twenty-five years later, Johnson’s concepts — such as the HCT (the “Home Control Truck”) and Big MOACT (the “Mother of All Control Trucks”) — seem quaint. So do his other creative (or politically insensitive) acronyms, like VEM (“Very Exciting Moment”), HBW (“Home Betting Window”), TEE (“Total Entertainment Environments”) or CIPBM (“Cheerleaders in Particularly Brief Miniskirts”).

While Johnson undoubtedly wrote with tongue firmly in cheek, he hit on topics such as home viewing enhancements, sports betting and immersive experiences, all destined to keep spectator sport as one of the world’s most enduring entertainment options.

Give him this much — sport has changed........

© Sports Business Journal