Malcolm Gladwell isn’t a big fan of American football. In fact, heads exploded when Gladwell predicted a few years ago that the game would become “ghettoized” by attracting only players who are willing to risk serious head trauma. He later followed that up by referring to football as a “moral abomination.”

But that’s not why The League is invoking the name of this best-selling author today. Gladwell’s third nonfiction book, called “Outliers: The Story of Success,” concludes that a common trait of extremely successful people is “the 10,000-hour rule.” Bill Gates got rich by programming for more than 10,000 hours. The Beatles got famous by playing together for more than 10,000 hours. While he isn’t mentioned in the book, Tom Brady probably got rich and famous by throwing a football more than 10,000 hours.

But Tom Brady isn’t why The League is talking about outliers today. Mark Koerner is. And John Beutler.

Koerner is the overall leader of the Coeur d’Alene Press All-Star Pigskin Prognosticators this season, posting 143 wins so far. Koerner was an outlier this week as the only pigskin picker to predict Houston would win at Indianapolis.

Beutler is a ways behind Koerner, but he, too, attained outlier status by being the only gridiron guesser to pick the Giants over the Cowboys.

The League assumed that both prognosticators, successful in life as they are in pigskin predictions, must have spent at least 10,000 hours handicapping NFL games. The League assumed wrong.

“Because the Colts suck,” Koerner summarized of his pristine prognostication.

He went into some detail, but here’s what The League found most interesting: “My picks just come off the top of my head. I don’t watch football. I watched a total of two plays last weekend. I do watch SportsCenter at night, but by then my picks are already done and then I go oh well ... ”

Beutler invested something less than 10,000 hours too, but at least he’s been paying attention.

“I liked the fact that they beat Dallas earlier in season and they were playing at home and their record is fairly solid,” he said. “I was shocked to see I was only one to pick them but if you look at my record it probably was no surprise as I have made other interesting picks as well.”

For this week’s interesting picks, see Page B5.