[curtains]

In the past few years you can generally pick 2-3 people who will win, and one of those people will win. You can do this after one performance. Fantasia, Carrie, Ruben are all very clear examples of this. I personally thought Taylor wouldn't win, but I was wrong that year and shouldn't have ignored his huge fanbase. However if I had to pick 3 people last year who may win, they would have clearly been: Chris, Katherine and Taylor in that order.

I don't think it's at all unreasonable to pick 2-3 people who have a legitimate chance and say that everyone else is pretty much in big trouble.

I also stand by Sabrina being 200-1 to win it all, she is clearly inferior to the other good singers, despite one good performance.That combined with her personality problems in comparison to them, gives her basically zero chance. I think she may not even make the final 12, although hopefully she does.

Also Phil Stacey was not good and also has basically zero chance. Sanjaya is more likely to win than Phil IMO, because if Sanjaya has a few good performances (which he probably isn't capable of), he would actually become a major force. Phil would be forgettable, maybe sneak into 4th-5th place or so at absolute best.