Anaheim to Pasadena is actually a little longer than SF to Palo Alto.
Yeah, Harbor Freeway is MURDER!
An argument that the entire NFL is rigged is definitely bonkers, but I don’t think it would be very difficult to do some nudging toward some prefered results and be hardly noticeable.
For instance, consider instant replay. Say a ref utterly blows a call. Meh, not a big deal, they can replay it. But it could be that it lends an air of legitimacy to a deliberately bad call. As in, oh, that ref just made a mistake, a replay will fix it, except if a ref makes enough of those or it’s on a play that the coach doesn’t think is really worth challenging, like a 6 yard completion on second down, they can slip through and add up. Sometimes, even a short missed pass or a bad spot on second down can mean killing a drive when they come up short on third or, conversely, a good spot can turn what should be 4th and inches into 1st and 10.
That said, if they were fixing things, I couldn’t see them fixing every game. It certainly wouldn’t make sense to have a team that consistently plays poorly somehow win. However, if two good teams play, it’s not unlikely that a few edged spots and a bad call or two can quickly swing momentum and ultimately the game toward one team or the other. And, if they were to do this, I imagine they probably do it later in the year to try to nudge a team or two into or out of the play-offs or, more likely, try to adjust seeding to get the most interesting play-off games.
So, I guess my point is that I don’t think they do, but I do think they could adjust a few outcomes with minimal involvement and without anyone really noticing. Seriously, would anyone really notice if one team gets 5-10 spots that are roughly 6 inches short and the other gets that many that are long? Probably not.
One corrupt official NBA who immediately implicated others. But the game would have been severely hurt by multiples. It ended there. But his first comments were believable.
He talked of favoring the calls for the stars. That is league corruption and you would have to be blind not to see it.
The NBA definitely protects its stars. They’re not even remotely discreet about it. The big-name guys, like Shaq or Magic Johnson, can pretty much rape the opposing players without getting a foul.
The one I’ve always heard for the NBA was that they assigned officiating teams in playoff series with an eye to prolonging the series. According to the theory, poorer refs were more likely to be swayed by the home crowd and/or not make tough calls against the home team. So, if the home team is down 2-0, assign three Schmoes to call the game, and maximize your chances of getting a longer series.
I am still amazed at how well the NBA weathered the Donaghy scandal, especially compared to similar scandals in college basketball and professional baseball. What would a Kenesaw Landis have done with Donaghy?
Though there are a few games in the NFL that make me raise my eyebrows (The first Packers-Bears game last year was one of the most inexplicably officiated games I’ve ever seen.), most of the issues I have with NFL officiating are due to the vague, inconsistently interpreted nature of concepts like incidental contact vs. pass interference, and how it’s horrible for a defensive player to ever make contact with his head on an offensive player, but e.g., Adrian Peterson is allowed to use his head like a Roman battering ram and it’s all good.
I think it’s ludicrous to assume the NFL is fixing games in any way, shape, or form.
Of course, over time, this happens in baseball, too. Sure, Ted Williams had a great eye, but after a few years, once he was ESTABLISHED as having a great eye, he got the benefit of the doubt on every pitch that was CLOSE to the outside corner. If a rookie has a full count and he doesn’t swing at a pitch that’s right around the outside corner, the ump will call “STRIKE THREE!” But if a Ted Williams does the same thing, it’ll be “BALL FOUR.” Because even the umps figure “If that was a strike, Ted Williams would’ve swung at it.”
It works the other way too, of course. If a picher has a reputation for pinpoint control (like Catfish Hunter or Greg Maddux), HE’LL get the benefit of the doubt on close calls.
I dunno. The guys in the broadcast booth keep a pretty close eye on where the ball is spotted, and will comment if they see a bad spot either short or long. If they start seeing the same team get screwed, I think they’d say something about that, too.
The Vikings have had calls against them forever. Unless they played the Lions. Then the Vikes got all the calls. That is common knowledge on the DOPE.
There is way more money to be made in keeping it fair. There are a lot of smart people keeping track of every measurable stat. There are a lot of smart people in Vegas that make a lot of money on the perception that it’s fair.
Unless the Seahawks are playing the Steelers for the Superbowl there is no reason to try and cheat.
In 1979 the Rams’ home field was the LA Coliseum, not Anaheim Stadium. Google maps says it is 13.9 miles from the Coliseum to the Rose Bowl. Meanwhile, up north, it was 22.9 miles from the 49ers’ home field of Candlestick Park to Stanford Stadium. Therefore both the Rams and the 49ers got to play Super Bowls within the home market area, if not on their actual home stadium turf.
Strictly speaking, there’s more money to be made in keeping things slightly unfair; television ratings spike for the top teams playing rivals (Colts/Pats, Vikings/Pack, Eagles/Cowboys, whatever) but aren’t measurably reduced in small markets when the local teams win, say, 6 games versus 8.
Of course, there’s no point at all in risking rigging the games, because the NFL is already a huge cash cow. Not worth risking that to get from a 16 MNF rating to a 17.5.
The Donaghy thing doesn’t “fuel the fires of suspicion,” it’s a smoking gun. Granted, it’s not proof the NBA is fixing games, but a ref having an effect on games he’s betting on is just a flat-out fixed game.
It’s to the NBA’s evil credit that they managed to get the story off the radar. If an ump was caught betting on MLB playoff games where he was the home plate umpire and the team he bet on won thanks to some favourable strike zone interpretation, it would be investigated by Congress. That’s not an exaggeration; I fully believe there’d be Senators and Representatives questioning baseball executives, players et al. and ripping baseball across the board. Moaning, the-sky-is-falling columns would run in every major newspaper in the land, condemning baseball as having betrayed humanity.
I fixed your link for you, which pointed to Super Bowl XIII.
Also, Pasadena was not the Rams’ home stadium.
I said “closest.” The 49ers played closer to home.
And your link leads to Super Bowl XIII, not the one with the Rams vs. Steelers.
Sometimes the spot is off by a yard or two, and I’ll definitely see them comment on that, but could anyone even really notice consistently small favorable spots. I will certainly notice if a spot is bad on big plays or if it’s off by a large margin, but I don’t really notice so much on early seemingly insignificant downs.
Really, my overall point is that I think refs probably have more potential influence on football than on any other sport. Sure, in the NBA you have foul calls that are sometimes left up to interpretation, and you have the strike zone and possibly close calls on outs for runners, but I think NFL has a lot more interaction. You have tons of calls that could be made and aren’t; hell, on a majority of plays a ref could probably throw a holding flag on a lineman, but often lets interior linemen get away with more. Not to mention that refs call when a player is down and spots the ball for every single play.
So, with more total interaction and so much of it depending on judgment calls, a higher number of subtle adjustments could have as much affect on the outcome of a game as a smaller number of larger ones, while being overall much less obvious.
I’m just hoping that in 30 years, proof comes to light that Tony Romo was being paid to throw individual plays and entire games by someone, whether it be other team owners, the league, or Jerry Jones himself. The past few years would make so much more sense if that were true.
I was adding information to the thread about another team playing in their home area. No criticism implied.
Sheesh.
I knew it! I knew there had to be a reason the Colts are sucking so bad! Well, other than the fact that they put all their eggs in one basket and all that…
:adjusts foil helmet:
Ok, sorry. Without something like “also,” it seemed like a refutation. I know it sounds bad, but I intended no snark. Kind of hard to convey feelings and emotions in a dry, message board setting.