I put this here because folks who are into sports would be likely to hear this: it’s a weird CT that I’ve run into at work. The main thrust of it is that pro football is like pro wrestling: staged for maximum excitement to keep the fans going. Close game? Someone drops an easy pass. Vick comes to Atlanta? He loses and gets hurt, just as the hometown crowd desires. Things in that vein. I don’t buy it at all (it would involve too many people, for one thing), I was more curious if anyone else had heard of it as well.
Only from a certain former doper who shall not be named.
I have heard the NFL will not allow the host city team to play in the Super Bowl. I give it about as much credibility as I give the truthers, birthers, alien abductees, et al.
I knew the Bears were better than the Saints. Thank you for helping me make sense of that loss.
Didn’t the Saints win their SB in the Superdome? I think so, but may be wrong…
Joe
New Orleans won in Miami. No team has even played at home. The closest was the 49ers winning in Palo Alto in 85, but it wasn’t their home stadium.
I guess you could call things like the draft and the salary cap a kind of conspiracy to keep talent levels vaguely equals across the league, but that’s reallllly stretching it.
I couldn’t imagine it being done in the NFL or MLB. Too many people involved to try to push it a certain way and keep mum about it at the same time.
I’d be more apt to buy into it for the NBA though strictly done by the refs. Violations are so subjective in that leauge that the refing crew could easily steer the game in a certain direction.
A home plate umpire could do it in MLB. (Less so now that there are all those electronic strike zone trackers, or at least it would become obvious after not very many games).
Anyone who saw Superbowl XL knows it’s fixed!
I’ve heard it, Love Rhombus, but I don’t buy it. The NFL is the soul of integrity compared to FIFA, the IOC, and the NBA.
I’ve heard crazy conspiracy theories regarding almost ALL sports, at one time or another, but I hear far fewer of them in pro football than in most other sports.
Pro basketball seems to spawn more conspiracy theories than any other major sport- remember all the raised eyebrows when Patrick Ewing went to the Knicks (“David Stern wants New York to win, so he fixed the lottery!”). And things like the Tim Donaghy scandal only fuel the fires of suspicion.
I don’t take conspiracy theories very seriously in ANY sport, but it’s understandable why the NBA attracts the most notice. That’s the place where you’d only need ONE corrupt official or ONE corrupt player to fix a game.
There are differing levels of “fixed” to keep in mind. It’s one thing for the league office to be dictating outcomes of every game or even a handful of games. It’s another thing altogether to say that some games are fixed because of mob involvement. The latter has happened many times in college and professional sports. It’s insane to say it’s been vanquished from modern sports. On the other hand, the NFL has way too many well-paid stars to effectively influence the outcomes in this way. In the NBA and college b-ball, a single player or ref on the take can easily be the difference between covering the spread or not.
The nuttiest conspiracy theory I’ve heard about the NFL comes from a relative and mixes the two flavors above. Apparently, every NFL team must file an offensive and defensive game plan with the league office. Every play, stunt, or coverage that might be run in the game must be pre-approved by the league. The mafia has desired outcomes in a number of games. In these cases, they lean on the league to veto certain aspects of the game plan and to give the opposing teams plans to the mafia-favored team. :smack:
It is stock standard BS in Australia too.
The most important football series on the East Coast is the Rugby League State of Origin.
Every year I hear people come up with theories about how it is rigged so that game 3 is the deciding game. I show them the arithmetic (and it isn’t complicated) that proves that even if Queensland is twice as good as NSW, it is odds on that they will not lead 2-0 after game 2.
Next year I hear the same crap.
And we already know that there was ONE corrupt official and he claims the corruption was more widespread. Just watch an NBA game and it’s not completely unbelievable. It is a league that thrives on its stars.
I don’t buy it for a second in regards ot the NFL, though. The NFL will make truck loads of money whether the Eagles win or lose in Atlanta. They don’t need corruption.
Plus, I think there’s just so many variables in football that is such an unbelievable stretch to think that some kicker made or missed a 48-yard game winning field goal on purpose. “Oh, ok, I’m supposed to kick this ball 48 yards through the uprights in the wind because the script tells me to. Easy peasy – I do this all the time!”
Plus, if things were fixed, there’s no way we’d see dynasties or many years of certain teams sucking. I think things would be evened out so that the excitement of winning is spread over more cities.
Well, more than that, the NFL has been very open and explicit that its scheduling rules are designed so that good teams play each other and bad teams play each other, which is designed to keep win-loss records vaguely equal across the league. But again, that’s open and according to published rules, so not a conspiracy.
If you looked only on the last couple weeks, you could have made a case to me that NFL referees are instructed to go easier on teams down by a significant amount, but it’s not really a long-standing pattern in the league (now, over-responding to whatever bitching the Colts do about officiating is another thing…)
Well, when people point to the Knicks’ landing of Patrick Ewing and claim that proves the NBA is favoring New York, I have to ask… how have the small market San Antonio Spurs won so many titles? And why have the Knicks been so pitiful for so long, if the NBA is pulling so many strings to make sure they win?
Now, DO sports leagues want to have successful franchises in big cities? OF COURSE! So, do they take steps to make that happen? Yes, sometimes- but not via cheating or rule-bending.
For example, the New York Giants, a flagship NFL team, were TERRIBLE from the mid Sixties through the early Eighties, and the two owners (Wellington Mara and his nephew Tim) were constantly squabbling over who to hire as coach or GM. Pete Rozelle stepped in and told them to hire George Young as GM… and that was the beginning of the Giants’ return to glory. Left alone, the Maras might have run the franchse into the ground. Pete Rozelle took some action to make sure the Giants stayed competitive.
Along those lines, DOES David Stern want the Knicks and Lakers to succeed? Of course he does- and he’d probably do something like what Rozelle did, if it were necessary. But he wouldn’t resort to rigging the draft or ordering refs to hand games to the Knicks.
Thinks they file those, huh? Got a big box of 'em in NYC? 
And here I was just watching this yesterday:
“Nigga, is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?”