Has there been any professional American teams (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, etc) that have been found to have intentionally thrown games?
Do the different American sports leagues have specific penalties for “throwing a game” (or intentionally losing)?
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Throwing this thread from General Questions to The Game Room.
NFL and NBA teams have both been accused of intentionally losing the final games of their seasons in order to pick and choose who they think they have a better chance against in the playoffs. Teams that have had very poor seasons have also been accused of throwing their last game to insure they finish last to get better draft picks. I don’t think anything has ever been proven though.
This isn’t American, but it’s bizarre enough that I think it deserves a mention.
In he 1994 Shell Caribbean Cup, Grenada beat Puerto Rico, bur Barbados lost to Puerto Rico. Then Grenada and Barbados played each other. If Barbados won, then all three would be tied for wins, and they would count up goals during the series to determine the tie breaker. This meant that all Grenada had to do was win to advance, but Barbados had to win by 2 goals to advance. Barbados was up 2-1 but time was running out and it didn’t seem like they would get the chance to score the third goal that they needed to advance. So they intentionally kicked the ball into their own net, tying the game at 2-2. They hoped that they would then be able to score in overtime, where any score would count as 2 points and would give them the 2 point lead that they needed.
So here’s where it gets really weird. It’s 2-2 with regular time running short, and Grenada realizes that if they win by one point then they advance, but also if they lose by one point they also advance. So Grenada comes up with the strategy of trying to kick the ball into either goal before time runs out, so that the game won’t go into overtime and give Barbados the chance to win the 2 point goal that they are trying for. Now, Barbados has to defend both goals. So for the rest of regular time, Grenada tries to score in either goal, and Barbados tries to prevent a score on both ends of the field.
It ended up that Grenada couldn’t score on either goal, the game went into overtime, and Barbados managed to score, which gave them the 2 point lead they needed to advance.
So Grenada tried their best to intentionally lose (or win), but couldn’t pull it off.
I’ve heard of that game. It hardly seems possible that a team couldn’t score in either goal. Get all your players near midfield, Barbados will have to split their team to defend both goals, then all the Grenadan players attack in one direction. Or kick it to your goalie and let him just walk in to the goal.
There was an NHL game sometime around 1970, final game of the season, in which Montreal would win the last spot in the playoffs if they won or tied, or if losing, scored at least five goals, in order to win the total goals tie-breaker. Early on, they were behind 3-0, and saw little prospect of winning or tying, so they pulled their goalie in the second period and played with six attackers and an undefended goal. If they lost the game 99-5, they would make the playoffs. But they quickly had a change of heart, erring on the side of an appearance of sportsmanship, and lost one-sidedly and failed to make their 5 goals and missed the playoffs.
There was also a game in the 60s in which the Chicago Black hawks preferred to play Montreal rather than Toronto in the first round of the playoffs, so Pierre Pilote was accused of taking a penalty late in the final game in order to finish one spot lower in the standings and get the playoff opponent they preferred.
When leagues organize silly bloated playoff structures with silly tie-breakers, they open themselves up to such shenanigans.
South Park did an eposide in which both little league teams just wanted to get the baseball season over with so they could get back to their video games, and both teams were trying to lose.
In 1966, the Dodgers had agreed to play a series of exhibition games in Japan after the regular season, and they would up in the World Series. After balling behind the Orioles 2 games to none, it is reported that the Dodgers just blew off the rest of the series, in order to go home and get some rest before flying to Japan. The Orioles swept the series, 4 games to none.
I was interested by a bit in The Curious Have Won, an article about the success of Theo Epstein with the Red Sox and the Cubs using baseball analytics.
It was stated that:
I agree - if you have the luxury of working out this strategy in advance. In the heat of the moment, with only seconds to go in the game, and not all players probably being aware of the ‘correct’ strategy, I can easily see how they would fail to score at either end.
The Dodgers played very badly in the 1966 World Series but I find it completely impossible to believe they would give up on the World Series to rest up for a flight to play some exhibition games. That doesn’t make any sense.
Anyway, they got shut out in Games 3 and 4 but actually played better, overall, than they had in the first two games.
Baseball probably had a lot of games thrown in its early years. The 1919 Black Sox scandal, subsequent banishments and commissioner system probably ended that, but it was sadly not all that unusual prior to 1919 - so much so that every time you had an upset in a major game, people talked about how it might have been a fix.
Tanking isn’t exactly throwing games. Teams in every professional league do it almost every year, to some degree. The 76ers in the NBA have been doing it longer than most.
Agreed, but then all the descriptions of the game that I’ve read, including engineer’s, are missing the point. I can absolutely understand that the Grenadan players were too confused by the situation to know what they should do. Hell, the first time I heard of this game, I was confused by it.
Going from memory, I think in the 60s, a number of college basketball players actually admitted to accusations of point shaving. Which means intentionally altering the score in favor of gamblers who bet on a smaller margin of victory. No games were won or lost unscrupulously, only the margin of the score.
I remember one NFL season - sometime in the 1970s, I think - where a team seriously considered forfeiting a game because it could guarantee itself a playoff spot if it didn’t lose by more than a certain number of points, and the final score of a forfeit would be either 1-0 or 2-0.
The score of a forfeited NFL game is 2-0.
While I could understand the possible motivation for forfeiting a game due to playoff considerations, the loss of revenue from cancelling a game would be a huge deterrent for any owners to consider.
In the NFL sometimes you don’t throw a game but intentionally risk a loss as a strategy.
Let’s say your quarterback is hurt in game 4 of the season. He can play at a limited capacity but it will set back his recovery. But if he rests for the week he’ll probably be at 100% afterward.
Your opponent in game 5 is a pretty tough one but they’re in a another division. A loss would be bad but you’ll still have a decent record and remain undefeated within your division. You’d have a reasonable chance of beating them with your star quarterback, even if sore. But you’re risking further injury playing him, especially since that team has a brutal defense that gets so many sacks and leaves offenses beat up.
Your opponent in game 6 is your main division rival though. You desperately want to win that game and want your quarterback at 100% for that match.
So you rest your quarterback in game 5. You’re not throwing the game, but your backup quarterback stinks and you’re unlikely to win.
Those kinds of strategies are really common in the NFL. And it comes close to throwing a game even though you’re still hoping to win.
The Dodgers’ loss was such a shock (They had Koufax and Drysdale!) that there were some weird stories trying to explain it.
Re college basketball point shaving scandal – that was in 1950-51, when CCNY (which had won both the NCAA Tournament and the NIT) players took payments from gamblers to win by a margin the protected the spread. Several other NYC area colleges were implicated, and at that time, the NYC area was the center of college basketball. It destroyed the basketball programs involved; Kentucky was the only school to keep winning at the Division I level.
The CCNYpoint shaving scandal was in the early 50s.
Similarly, in baseball, a team will occasionally start a pitcher who normally is used only from the bullpen or who just got called up from the minor leagues, knowing full well he may not do a very good job. This is done to make sure the regular starting pitchers get enough rest. The manager is willing to give the opponent a near-certain win in order to make sure his own pitching staff stays fresh.