It’s still real to me, damnit!
Probably more because of the 2002 situation where Michelle Kwan and Sarah Hughes both skated, and Kwan still had the overall lead, but then Irina Slutskaya skated, and Hughes ended up winning. Something like this is impossible under a pure points system.
But you’re right; how well you were “supposed to” skate was part of figure skating judging - I like to joke that, back in the days of the 6.0 system, the first score was what the skater earned, and the second score was what the skater was expected to score. The main problem with that system was, the numbers themselves were meaningless; it was how each judge ranked the skaters (first, second, third, and so on) that mattered. Judges assigned scores with the placings in mind. In fact, the rules required that, after the first skater in each round skated, the average scores were to be given to each judge, and then the judges would modify their scores so that, even if they weren’t all on the same page, at least they would be on the same chapter of the book.
According to his autobiography, Chris Jericho thought that NWA title matches were real fights until he started pro wrestling training. I used to hear the opposite about MMA in the old days - “lower-level matches are real, but Severn-Shamrock was rigged the way wrestling is.”
Also, Ric Flair tells a story in his autobiography about how, after his plane crash in 1975, another wrestler that heard about it rushed to the scene and pulled away a “good guy” wrestler who was flying with Flair, because everybody felt that if word got out that Flair and a face were flying to a match together, it would ruin wrestling, at least in that area.
In a way, the NWA does qualify for this, for a “real reason”; the Board of Directors decides who the world champion is, and it never had the guts to put the belt on a black wrestler, almost certainly because of the sport’s popularity in Georgia / Florida / the Carolinas.
And pretty much nobody cares about, oh, I’d say about 95% of those workers. It’s the FBS football and Division I men’s basketball players - and even then, probably limited even further to just the “major” conferences and Notre Dame - that grab the headlines concerning not getting paid. The NCAA is just as much the UC-Santa Cruz women’s golf team as it is the Alabama football team or the Duke men’s basketball team. Okay, the latter two make the NCAA more money…
…or does it? Just how much money does the NCAA pocket from bowl games or the Division I men’s basketball championship? (Keep in mind that quite a bit of the basketball TV money goes back to the schools and conferences.)
I think the problem with boxing is, there aren’t any “personalities” that draw in the crowds. It’s not a problem of fights only being on PPV; even back in the late 1960s, major fights were shown only in movie theaters. (If you had a shortwave radio, maybe you could hear an AFRTS radio broadcast of the fight.) This is also how the first two or three WrestleManias were broadcast.
Most of the personalities came out of the Olympics (the one exception I can think of: Mike Tyson), but how many Olympic gold medalists can anyone name since Oscar de la Hoya in 1992? Some people blame the change in the scoring system for the problem; the amateur sport had become an exercise in punch counting. (Never mind that, from 1972 to 1988, judges were instructed to score bouts strictly based on punch counts; almost needless to say, virtually all of them scored fights professional style (with politics and “home ring advantage” thrown in; I’m pretty sure the Roy Jones Jr. fight in 1988 was what caused the change). Ironically, if the rules don’t change again before then, the 2016 Olympics will be scored professional style.) What makes it worse is, a few years ago, the qualifying rules were changed, and USA is no longer guaranteed a boxer in every weight class.
About the NCAA, it is non-profit. There are no share holders, etc. So I’m not sure the fact that the student athletes are unpaid is itself a reason to condemn or question it as an organization. As for NCAA president salaries or what have you, well despite being non-profit it does nonetheless have to compete against corporations and the like for recruitment and retention.
The NCAA is far from perfect, but I don’t think its level of stinkiness remotely compares to FIFA, UCI, IOC, etc. The stink of sports corruption clings to the powerhouse universities much more than to the NCAA itself, in my opinion.
ETA: argh, did I just write a post defending the NCAA. Gah!
One problem with boxing is that there are too many governing bodies who hate each other and each of them has its own champions and its own ladders. Back in the heyday of the sport, there was only one, and everybody “knew” who the champions were.
I agree with your point to an extent, but the fact was also that up until probably the early 1980s (while the NWA was still relevant), they would never, ever, ever put the belt on someone who was not a legitimate hooker/shooter, and the fact is that there weren’t any Blacks that were up to that level.
Having said that, though, Thunderbolt Patterson, Bearcat Wright, and Rufus R. Jones were immensely over in the areas. And T-Bolt did indeed regional titles in Georgia and Florida.
IOC is horrendously and pretty openly corrupt, of course. NFL doesn’t really seem to care about the health of players or, well, pretty much any woman. Lots of smaller governing bodies are fairly incompetent at the basics of organizing things or getting fair judges.
But FIFA hits it all. Not only openly corrupt, but they can’t even get competent referees at the biggest games in the world, nor can they organize competitions that don’t literally endanger the lives of players and specators (and have already killed who knows how many workers).
FIFA runs away with it, IMHO.
The NFL was confused at what their fans want, that is all that matters of any organization. We all can agree domestic violence is awful, yet do the majority of fans believe the league should independently suspend that player? Should you be suspended from your job for a crime unrelated to your occupation in any way?
The fans have decided what it wants, the NFL has taken appropriate steps (albeit slowly). The US justice system routinely allows wealthy people to avoid jail for crimes poor people would do time for, the outrage for that hurts the financial bottom line for an organization depending on those outraged. It’s pathetic that a billion dollar business is now more progressive in punitive action against its millionaire employees than our justice system.