# Sports Conspiracy Theories **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [June 5, 2014, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094 "2014-06-05T04:41:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/21 "2014-06-05T17:06:40Z")
> [@Cumbrian](#): > > I’m neither SA nor NZ and everything I have read on both sides of that suggests that it actually happened, which lifts it clear of “theory” in my book. Nothing I have read on the subject suggests that they were poisoned. The evidence is extremely convincing that the team just inadvertently got into some bad food or that a virus ran through the team, which is a common occurrence and exactly matches what happened. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/22 "2014-06-05T17:16:57Z")
I know nothing firsthand about Japanese sumo wrestling, but in his first _ **Freakonomics** _ book, Steven Leavitt claimed it was a badly kept secret that sumo wrestlers regularly “throw” matches to opponents who need a win. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/23 "2014-06-05T17:36:03Z")
Michael Jordan’s year away from the Bulls wasn’t really so he could see if he could play pro baseball. It was a cover story for his NBA suspension for gambling. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/24 "2014-06-05T17:37:31Z")
Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb were officially exonerated of fixing a game in which they were the managers, so there’d be no uncomfortable PR repercussions for baseball, but still lost those jobs. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/25 "2014-06-05T21:32:11Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Brett Favre allowed himself to get sacked so Michael Strahan could break the single season record. Everyone assumes it’s true but as far as I know Farve has never said it happened that way. I never suspected that WASN’T true. You can see he dove before any contact. Favre was a such a nice guy.🙂 To go further, I think he threw the Super Bowl against Denver so Elway could get a ring before he retired. My SCT is that this was Favre’s own decision (just like helping Strahan’s record), and he never did (and never will) tell the “truth”. And for what? Elway not only took that one, he went and did it again the next year, without any help. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/26 "2014-06-05T21:36:09Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > One conspiracy theory that may have some validity: the 1951 New York Giants made a big comeback, capped by Bobby Thomson’s famous homer, to win the National League pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers. > > The theory (which certainly has some basis in fact) is thta the Giants had an elaborate system of stealing signs… meaning Thomson may have been cheating when he hit his homer. I don’t think there’s anything “cheating” about stealing signs. If you can’t conceal your signs better than that, you get what you deserve. But there’s nothing in the rulebook about signs at all. Unsportsmanlike, maybe. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/27 "2014-06-05T21:48:40Z")
The big SCT I have, is that the NBA is fixed. Like pro wrestling (shhh), except in this case, the players don’t know it. The NBA has the narrative they want, and the refs guide the games to get that outcome. This explains the games with 20 fouls called on one team to 4 on the other. The teams still have to make their shots, and since the players and coaches don’t know who is supposed to win, you can still get the unexpected surprise win. Other than the payoffs, that surprising outcome is useful-it “prooves” that the games aren’t fixed. The NBA wants dominant “good” teams, dominant teams that everyone hates, middle of the road “spear carrier” teams, and a designated loser team. For the longest time, that team was the Clippers. This is why owners and coaches are fined so much for criticizing the officiating. Not because the NBA is thin-skinned, but because the less people talk about it, the less chance of anyone figuring it out. It’s not that some refs are crooked - it’s that they ALL are, in the sense that they’re not officiating a game, they’re managing a stage show. The refs get the assignment daily, and know who is supposed to win. But if the “wrong” team wins, it’s OK, because ultimately it’s about the “show”. Only in the playoffs does who actually wins a specific game matter. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/28 "2014-06-05T21:53:57Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > I want to hear any and all CT’s you have either read about and found interesting, heard about in a conversation with others, or have made up in your own mind for fun. David Stern forced Michael Jordan to play baseball in the '90s because Jordan had uncovered the truth about the Kennedy assassination: Bud Selig had had JFK murdered because the president had learned that the Mafia were using performance enhancing drugs supplied by Fidel Castro in order to boost their stats. Lance Armstrong was a Mafia enforcer who only got into cycling because his loan sharking business dried up and he had no way to offload his illegal PEDs. Later he was able to sell those drugs to Anthony Bosch. ---
**Author:** ![Calatin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Calatin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calatin)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/29 "2014-06-05T21:56:28Z")
I think pro wrestling is rigged. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/30 "2014-06-05T22:00:03Z")
Here in Sacramento, lots of people are still royally pissed about Game 6 of the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals, which everyone \*knows \*was rigged so the Kings couldn’t eliminate the Lakers from the playoffs. Maybe the refs stole the game from them, maybe they didn’t…but none of it would have mattered anyway if they could have made a freakin’ free throw in Game 7… ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/31 "2014-06-05T22:02:32Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > **The NFL contacted the St.Louis Rams and asked them to draft Michael Sams so the league would not have a homophobic label attached to it**. The Rams made sense because Missouri is the state that Sams played his college football in, so he has a lot more support there than in other cities. Pardon me for going for the “obvious answer,” but having lived in the San Francisco area my entire life, I would have expected that if the NFL wanted fo “force” Sams onto a team, he would have asked the 49ers to do it. From what I have seen, he certainly would have the support. The only “problem” would be that 49ers are pretty much permanently sold out, even the new, larger stadium, so Sams wouldn’t necessarily “bring people into the stadium.” Here’s my sports conspiracy theory, although I’m probably the only person who even remotely believes it: The Soviets threw the hockey game against the USA in Lake Placid in 1980. How else do you explain a Soviet defenseman passing the puck to a USA player _right in front of the Soviet goal_ with, what, five seconds left in the first period, and then replacing one of the best goalies in the history of the game (although, supposedly, the coach later said it was the worst mistake he had ever made)? “Why?”, you ask? My best guess is, somebody figured it was more likely that USA would show up at the Summer Olympics in Moscow to give the Soviets a chance to “even the score” by way of the men’s basketball tournament. (The two countries didn’t play each other in 1976, and memories of what happened in 1972 were still fresh.) ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Greenjeans](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.greenjeans/32/551_2.png) [@Mr.Greenjeans](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Greenjeans)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/32 "2014-06-05T22:07:34Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > I know nothing firsthand about Japanese sumo wrestling, but in his first _ **Freakonomics** _ book, Steven Leavitt claimed it was a badly kept secret that sumo wrestlers regularly “throw” matches to opponents who need a win. That’s not even much of a secret anymore: [2011 Sumo Match Fixing Investigation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match-fixing_in_professional_sumo#2011_investigation). ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/33 "2014-06-05T22:14:01Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > There have always been rumors than Sonny Liston took a dive in the famous “Invisible Punch” match against Cassius Clay/Muhammad ALi. > [@davidw](#): > > In the first Liston vs. Clay fight, Clay was blinded in the 5th round by a foreign substance. Some people have speculated that Liston’s corner rubbed something on his gloves to purposely blind Clay. Now this is a REAL conspiracy! Half of Liston’s team trying to cheat for a win, the other half busy telling the champ to take a dive. ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/34 "2014-06-05T22:32:09Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb were officially exonerated of fixing a game in which they were the managers, so there’d be no uncomfortable PR repercussions for baseball, but still lost those jobs. Wasn’t the reason Cobb was exonerated was because he had some dirt on MLB and threatened to come forward? I don’t remember specifics, but your post jiggled something in my gray matter. I will try to find it, but I thought I’d post this in the meantime in case someone knows details about what i am referring to. I am almost positive that the story I read about this said that Cobb and Speaker were guilty of the charge. I hope my google fu can find this. ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/35 "2014-06-05T22:58:03Z")
His trainer thought favored Holy Bull was drugged before the 1994 Kentucky Derby. [http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1997-04-30/sports/9704290368\_1\_jimmy-croll-year-holy-bull-derby-preps](http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1997-04-30/sports/9704290368_1_jimmy-croll-year-holy-bull-derby-preps) ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/36 "2014-06-05T23:39:22Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Now this is a REAL conspiracy! Half of Liston’s team trying to cheat for a win, the other half busy telling the champ to take a dive. Two different fights. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2014, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/37 "2014-06-05T23:55:40Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Two different fights. Okay, to clairfy, my reference was to Liston’s failure to come out in the 7th round in[the first fight](http://ringtv.craveonline.com/news/320983-cassius-clay-sonny-liston-i-50-years-later), the one in Miami, as well as Clay’s mysterious burning eyes. The rematch, the one in Maine, ended in the first round with the “phantom punch.” ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/38 "2014-06-06T00:45:51Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > Pardon me for going for the “obvious answer,” but having lived in the San Francisco area my entire life, I would have expected that if the NFL wanted fo “force” Sams onto a team, he would have asked the 49ers to do it. From what I have seen, he certainly would have the support. The only “problem” would be that 49ers are pretty much permanently sold out, even the new, larger stadium, so Sams wouldn’t necessarily “bring people into the stadium.” Not sure he would’ve been welcomed: [“We don’t have any gay guys on the team,” [49ers CB Chris] Culliver said. “They gotta get up outta here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff.”](http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000133011/article/chris-culliver-wouldnt-accept-openly-gay-49ers-player) ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/39 "2014-06-06T03:46:23Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > Don Shula helped throw Super Bowl III, which gave the AFL instant credibility. Shula’s reward? He was given every break possible to give his Dolphins their perfect season in 1972 The main flaw in this is that if the Jets had lost the Super Bowl, the AFL would still have had a winning record in head-to-head matchups with the NFL that year. ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094/40 "2014-06-06T04:45:23Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > The main flaw in this is that if the Jets had lost the Super Bowl, the AFL would still have had a winning record in head-to-head matchups with the NFL that year. There are a lot of flaws in my CT, however, this isn’t one of them. The only thing history remembers is super bowls. If the Jets lost Super Bowl III, would ANYONE care what the results of the head-to-head match-ups that year were? I couldn’t tell you what the head to head record between the NFL and AFL was that year, nor do I care. I couldn’t tell you what the head to head record between the AFC and NFC was last year, either. I couldn’t even tell you who won more games. Bit I can tell you that the Seahawks of the NFC beat the Broncos of the AFC. And that is really the only thing that really matters. Back in the AFL-NFL days, the only thing that mattered was the result of the Super Bowl, as that was a true referendum of which league was the better league. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-conspiracy-theories/690094.md?page=3)