For football fans (and other sports fans), Oz Pearlman has become a periodic presence (or, as the case may be, irritant) in the programming choices made by those who produce and present content.
He appeared on Hard Knocks with the Jets. He’s performed for the Rams. The Cowboys. The Bills. He has appeared on various sports studio shows.
ESPN has gone to the Oz well often. Adam Schefter has promoted Oz on multiple occasions.
And that’s fine. But here’s the problem. He’s a magician, not a mentalist. He isn’t reading minds. He’s performing tricks.
Magicians are honest about their nature. They admit it’s a trick. And the tricks can be impressive, but true magicians never try to act like they’re performing magic.
Oz, and more importantly those who promote him, sell the shtick as real. As sorcery, or whatever.
Earlier this week, Pablo Torre devoted a full episode to the Oz phenomenon: Debunking Oz Pearlman’s Tricks: Is He A Fraud?
The fraud isn’t in the magic tricks (which are necessarily fraudulent) but the suggestion it’s not a trick. But he’s not a mind reader. He’s a magician. And those who give his magic tricks the time of day — under the guise that it’s true magic — are the ones helping to perpetrate the fraud.
Those who hold him out as being a true mind reader know or should know that he’s a magician with a very specific niche. And Oz has parlayed it into countless studio appearances during which he wows the hosts and panelists with his supposed mind reading.
Pablo and Steve Baskin show how some of the tricks are accomplished. Baskin suggests Oz stunned Joe Rogan with the reveal of his personal, secret PIN number by utilizing the little-known calculator history in every iPhone.
They also peel back the curtain on how he uses production meetings to plant the seeds that allow the tricks to happen.
That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. Good magicians are. But Oz is a magician, not a mind reader. And it has always seemed to be more than a little lazy for those who make the decisions about what will and won’t be included in a pregame show or a talk show or a presentation to a football team or whatever to dial up a garden-variety magician and push the idea that it’s not a parlor trick, but true, unadulterated magic.
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