NFL is as fake as Pro-Wrestling

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At Least One Admits It

I did not grow up a football fan. My father is a football fan, but somehow we missed connecting on that even when he took me to Saints games a few times. It just never imprinted until I got a bit older. It’s hard for me to really put a time frame on it but the first game I clearly remember watching every minute of was the Patriots losing to the Giants in the Superbowl. As I got more into it I did my traditional habit and learned a ton of history. Learned about the Manning family and Archie Manning, learned about Bobby Hebert who now has a radio show in New Orleans. I got more into the college football I’d been interested in when I was younger — Alabama, Notre Dame, even my Southern Miss Golden Eagles. This happened pretty much concurrently with the rise of other sports in my view (except UFC; that came later). I enjoy the competition, the athletes at the height of their game competing on a fair field.

Well, it’s not a fair field anymore.

A few years ago the referees had a strike. These part-time officials decided they didn’t like part of their deal and held out. The NFL brought in replacement officials in the interim and they weren’t any worse than the usual zebras. Until the Seattle-Green Bay game. On the game winning drive there was a controversial call that swung the outcome of the game, and the NFL immediately caved to the part-time officials (who make an average salary closer to 200 grand than the nickel a year they deserve).

Around this same time, my Saints were eviscerated by the commissioner, Roger Goodell. He claimed they had an illegal bounty system designed to hurt players. But during the three years the bounty system supposedly existed (a bounty system most honest players will admit they had at least some of), the Saints were one of the least penalized team. Basically, they talked a lot of shit to each other the way men are wont to do when they’re competing and trying to out-do each other. Also, other teams the architect (Greg Williams) was on supposedly had the exact same system but the NFL stopped with the Saints. They banned the coach, and Greg Williams, they banned a few players (all overturned either in court or by the independent arbitrator). Took away draft picks. Basically took a huge dump on the team. They’ve never recovered.

Since the referees came back, it seems like every week — for years now — at least one game is decided by blatant incompetency. The NFL even threatens to (and does) fine teams or players for criticizing these idiots. Much worse in some cases than the incident that cost the replacement referees their jobs.

Also since the bounty investigation Roger Goodell has completely dropped the ball numerous times. He dropped the ball on a few domestic violence incidents that caused a lot of negative publicity. When it comes to this I think the NFL should let the legal system decide it but since they stuck their nose in to begin with now they have to live with it. Much like marijuana and other substances the NFL has an established policy but no actual consistency.

There was also a strange issue with supposedly deflated footballs in New England. Now, I’m not a Patriots fan as much as I like their name and logo, and I outright dislike Tom Brady, their star quarterback. Something about him just sets me off. It doesn’t even matter: I don’t like him, end of story. The controversy was that he was supposedly having the balls inflated to below the required lower limit (other quarterbacks have also admitted to trying to skirt the limits). Well, the evidence of this was a ball recovered from an interception being supposedly low. What they didn’t take into account was the weather: At the start of the game, the balls all passed the check — administered by the holy referees — but at half time they checked and the Patriots had under-inflated footballs.

They didn’t check the opposing team’s balls, but if they had they likely would have found them under-inflated as well. You see, in cold weather, air pressure inside a container drops as the air molecules move less. Imagine steam versus water: the reason water turns to steam when it boils is because the molecules are excited by the temperature and they move more freely. As you cool the gas that is oxygen the molecules lose that excitation — and there are formulas for detecting this — and the pressure gets lower. Physics is an amazingly consistent thing in the realm of our understanding (once you get to edge cases like string theory all bets are off).

Now, because of this, after many months, Goodell banned Tom Brady for four games. I thought this was absurd at the time, but it’s moreso now. One of the reasons Goodell got mad was that Brady destroyed his cellphone rather than turn it over. Supposedly his text-messages would condemn him. Well, I don’t know about you… but I don’t want my boss reading my texts, either, and the stuff I say to my wife is nobody’s business. Other texts from others who turned in their phones were leaked by the NFL. Why would Brady subject himself to that? Also, the texts themselves wouldn’t have been destroyed. The NFL could have gone to the phone company, and through the courts, to get them if this was that important. I would not give over a device that has my personal pictures and other information to any organization Roger Goodell’s dumb ass was in charge of.

In the current NFL season nearly every week at least one game is decided by the referees. There have been a few that even I’ve seen: Seattle player bats the ball out of the end-zone, no penalty is called. This is a penalty 100% of the time and Detroit should have had first and goal from the goal line. Seattle actually features in quite a few of these: Seattle had a penalty go un-called during the Dallas game that would have resulted in a first and goal for them, as well. The missed calls by the referees can be excused as incompetence… a little.

Today the Saints were making quick work of the Panthers at first. Then the referees started missing a lot of calls. They missed at least three twelve men in the huddle calls against Carolina. Counting to twelve isn’t that hard. They also called something a catch that clearly wasn’t because the ground can’t help you make a catch.

This isn’t accidental. My belief in coincidence only goes so far and I think they are at the very least trying to push certain teams toward certain outcomes. Maybe not the entire NFL structure but at the very least Goodell, Blandino (the head of officiating), and a few referees in the know. It’s really hard to chalk up this many missed calls to mistakes. Either the NFL is rigging games for some reason, or the officials are the most incompetent people on the planet. In my opinion, the fix is in and the players and coaches just don’t know it. Otherwise, after this many weeks and this many words printed about how bad the mistakes are, the NFL would have had some sort of plan put into place to fix these horrendous misses.

It’s all rigged: at least the WWE is man enough to admit it.