Just like March Madness pools, many people participate in Oscar pools where people predict who will win in each Academy Awards category. For Oakland A’s pitcher John Axford, he takes this very seriously and recent history has shown that he’s pretty good.
Over the past few years, Axford posts his predictions on Twitter and has done a very good job. Since 2013, Axford has an 81% accuracy rate in his Oscar picks, including going 14 for 15 in 2013 and a perfect 18 for 18 in 2014. Going 17 for 24 in 2015 and 2016 puts his total at 66 for 81.
This isn’t some coincidence, Axford has a bachelor’s degree in film and television from Notre Dame and has loved movies all his life.
Axford’s strategy has been a mix of actually watching the nominated movies and looking at past voting history.
“I watch as many of the films as I can, if not all of them,” he says. “I do my due diligence and homework and see how the award season is going, see who wins and just go from there. But sometimes I just have to go with my gut as opposed to the probabilities.”
“You have to realize where they vote and how they vote, particularly toward best picture, and where the best actor and actresses awards have gone recently,” Axford says. “Sometimes it just goes back to the Screen Actors Guild Awards and what people have done there.”
Sure, this all makes sense to even a non-movie expert. Watch the films and look at how the Screen Actors Guild or the Golden Globes have voted and use that as a benchmark. One piece of strategy that Axford utilizes that is a bit of an insider tip is focusing on how often actors win awards.
“Generally with the Academy if you win, you don’t win again right after for the next couple of years,” Axford says. “They usually take a little break, you can certainly look at the history of Tom Hanks for some of that.”
As far as this years predictions, Axford is torn because like many people, he prefers Moonlight but La La Land is the “Hollywood” film and the Academy could go for the film that celebrates their industry instead of what is regarded as the best film. That, plus some tough choices in the Best Supporting Actor category and the lesser known technical awards, Axford is going to be in a tough battle to maintain his 80% success rate.
