Last Friday was draft night for my Yahoo Sports Fantasy Football league. In about an hour, I had skillfully selected a Super Bowl-caliber lineup guaranteed to win the championship. No, I never played football in junior high, or even high school. I don’t coach a Pop Warner football team. And no, my bloodline does not contain the lineage of Shula, Bryant or Landry. But, I do watch football on TV. So in a nutshell, you can see why I am uniquely qualified to carry the title, “General Manager.“

A lot of us in marketing, both on the client and agency side, find ourselves in this circumstance every day. How many times has someone from Finance, a neighbor, or a fellow parent on your child’s soccer team critiqued, or offered unsolicited comments on, one of your campaigns? Forget that silly marketing degree, MBA, MRI data, shopper insight, strategy or CLIO. For some reason, everyone sees themselves as a marketing expert because they see commercials on TV.

It’s the same thing with GMs and coaches in the NFL. There’s no shortage of sports-talk show callers with the “solution” on how to improve their favorite team. And there are plenty of Fantasy Football GMs who think they are as smart as a Bill Parcells or Bill Belicheck. But that’s because they’ll never have to prove it. And neither will the finance department, neighbors or soccer team parents. In today’s fast-paced, media-fragmented, ROI-driven world, they would be living a Fantasy if they thought they could.