Basketball is easier to fix and point shave than football. More possessions and scoring plays means more opportunities to cheat. Is there some attempted match fixing and point shaving in football? I would say probably yes in college football, probably not in the NFL.
There isn’t some referee directive to favor the Chiefs either, Mahomes is just really good.
I agree, basketball and baseball are easier to fix than football. In football, you sort of need a quarterback, or a key wide receiver on your side. In basketball or baseball almost anyone could throw away the game.
Calls often go "for" one team. It was a problem when New England was dominant. And it's an issue now with KC.
The story is this:
Muhammed Ali was at the same time the most popular and most hated athlete. He said- people tuned in to watch him lose and he never lost.
Bowie Kuhn let George Steinbrenner back into baseball with the caveat that he make the Yankees great because people loved to hate the Yankees.
lol
Watch most of Ali’s fights from’71 onward. He was carried by crooked judges for years. Overrated fraud.
I wouldn’t say he was carried, but Ali was definitely the beneficiary of some very favorable judging later in his career. The Ken Norton fights especially, as you alluded. There’s good evidence to suggest both Sonny Liston fights were fixed, not that Ali was aware going in.
It’s ironic. Ali built his global reputation around his iconic stand as a proud, black man persecuted by a white world. Fact is, that same white world protected him, insured he won, at least a few fights that he probably shouldn’t have, and carefully avoided reporting on some of his more radical racial and religious beliefs. Not to mention his racist tirades towards Joe Frazier.
Basketball is easier to fix and point shave than football. More possessions and scoring plays means more opportunities to cheat. Is there some attempted match fixing and point shaving in football? I would say probably yes in college football, probably not in the NFL.
There isn’t some referee directive to favor the Chiefs either, Mahomes is just really good.
I agree, basketball and baseball are easier to fix than football. In football, you sort of need a quarterback, or a key wide receiver on your side. In basketball or baseball almost anyone could throw away the game.
Star quarterbacks get home-cooking from the refs, no doubt about it. Be it Mahomes getting a roughing call every time somebody breathes on him, to Peyton Manning's linemen being allowed to hold with impunity (also goes for Mahomes), etc, etc... it happens, and it sucks.
That being said... the NBA is waaaaay more rigged for specific teams / markets by the refs. Sacramento got criminally screwed in 2002 in favor of the Lakers. The Knicks were gifted into the 1994 finals over the Pacers. Tons of other examples.
I don’t believe it is fully fixed, but I can’t intellectually get around the influence sports betting seems to have on the league. I
s there a financial incentive to influence games, even in subtle ways? Is it really possible to have a system of fixing games without it the public knowing? Even still, we seem to live in an era where referees have a huge amount of sway in games. A few important calls go a different way, and the Bills very possibly win tonight’s game against the chiefs.
discus
Refs give star players star calls sometimes. Also, from a gambling perspective who wins the game is far less important than who covers the spread as way more people bet against the spread rather than the moneyline. I don't believe the NFL is contacting the refs saying "call a penalty because my uncle put 5k on Team1. Too many people involved to get away with it. Of course, there are documented occurrences of individual refs trying to sway the score, but I don't think the NFL is actively doing this.
Calls often go "for" one team. It was a problem when New England was dominant. And it's an issue now with KC.
The story is this:
Muhammed Ali was at the same time the most popular and most hated athlete. He said- people tuned in to watch him lose and he never lost.
Bowie Kuhn let George Steinbrenner back into baseball with the caveat that he make the Yankees great because people loved to hate the Yankees.
It was a problem with the Patriots? Was that when they suspended Brady for "inflating" footballs and gave him a 4 game suspension and fined the Patriots an NFL record million dollars when the Vikings literally were on camera holding footballs next to a space heater and got nothing? Spygate was legit - but Deflategate was nonsense.
Front Office Sports first reported the pop star generated more than $330 million for the NFL and Chiefs, according to Apex Marketing Group.
High level delusion is thinking the Roger Goodell isn’t aware of Taylor Swift’s economic impact and wouldn’t use his power to influence the outcome of games.
Ok, this is fair. But, what did Roger Goodell specifically do to fix games? Ref has a mic in his ear and Goodell is like "call pass interference!" or what? Too many people involved like some previous poster said.
Some people seem to think Vegas is fixing games, others think the owners and others think the NFL themselves.
If the NFL wanted to improve ratings by having the "big" and "popular" teams in the SB then surely the Cowboys would be there against KC this season and not Eagles? Jets and Giants wouldn't be allowed to be so poor if the fix was "in"
F1 has this issue sometimes when the best driver drives the best car. It becomes boring. NFL has the best coach coaching the best QB and it is creating a dynasty that the NFL is designed to avoid (much like NE previously)
The rules are set up by the NFL to protect QBs. They are the stars. The same teams with the same QBs all seem to be winning season after season and then only being beaten by each other. There is no fix. It is just a QB centric league and the best QBs are winning.
I don’t believe it is fully fixed, but I can’t intellectually get around the influence sports betting seems to have on the league. I
s there a financial incentive to influence games, even in subtle ways? Is it really possible to have a system of fixing games without it the public knowing? Even still, we seem to live in an era where referees have a huge amount of sway in games. A few important calls go a different way, and the Bills very possibly win tonight’s game against the chiefs.
discus
US football is harder to fix than many pro sports.
Soccer - all it takes is one goal and one bad play can cause one goal. Also you can bet on things like yellow cards which are easy to force.
Tennis - lose serve twice in a match and you lose the match. Very easy to fix and very commonly done.
Basketball - have to get to the refs. It's more complicated. But lots of FT to one side and not the others is how Donaghy did it back in the day.
NFL - it's much harder to throw the outcome in such a team sport. But you can throw all kinds of side bets. Margin of victory, how many TDs, etc. Got to get to a coach or a QB to be really effective.
No, I don't believe it's rigged. If your team didn't win it's rigged! This kind of reminds me of my online poker days, 2004-2011. I was crushing sit n gos on the reg, three to four at a time. Making bank, took that money and invested it. It's paid off. It was always the losing players that were saying, "it's rigged." Okay, perhaps you just aren't any good.
Given the enormous amounts of money to be made off of the NFL, there are inevitably players and officials cheating. But to say that the result as a whole is fixed is to assume the possibility of silent collusion on such a vast level as to be improbable.
I'm not sure why the two threads were merged. One was about the games being fixed and the other about the game itself.
Anyway, I really have nothing against the Chiefs but I would have rather seen the Bills in the SB. The Eagles are one of my least favorite teams. The fans suck and think that their sh!t doesn't stink. I'm hoping that the Chiefs win but am ready for a different team from the AFC to make it.
I don’t believe it is fully fixed, but I can’t intellectually get around the influence sports betting seems to have on the league. I
s there a financial incentive to influence games, even in subtle ways? Is it really possible to have a system of fixing games without it the public knowing? Even still, we seem to live in an era where referees have a huge amount of sway in games. A few important calls go a different way, and the Bills very possibly win tonight’s game against the chiefs.
discus
I don’t know. these guys aren’t that smart.
and they’ve been fierce competitors most of their lives, so it’s hard to believe they could turn that off. Imagine adrenaline surging in the 4th quarter trying to make a huge play and then, convincingly, doing the opposite to let the other team score or whatever.
Also, seems impossible no one has leaked the secret of the fixing and the truth hasn’t come out. Not even when someone is drunk or on their deathbed. There are thousands of people involved.
people are terrible at keeping secrets, but conspiracy theorists think athletes and the government can keep secrets perfectly for years.
Yeah right, these folks aren’t that quality of people.
so, maybe some are cheating and betting, but it’s isolated to tiny groups.
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