There’s so much that can be said from such a succinct statement. I believe the 2024 SEC season was complete with stuff like this, but apparently the officials are officially offended.
Having to release a statement in and of itself is almost an admission of some semblance of guilt. This is the part where your attorney leans in and says “my client declines comment at this time…and forever, for that matter”. Sometimes, silence really is golden.
Somewhere out there, I’d imagine, Penn Wagers is saying “hold my beer”.
Those zebras have their marching orders behind the cause of whuts good for the brand, moving forward….138 peeps with flags and whistles is quite a movement…
I cannot conceive of a logical reason that rigging the Chief’s games is “good for the brand.” What the NFL has consistently through its history has considered “good for the brand” is the gambling industry’s confidence that the games are not rigged. MLB blackballed players for life to protect that confidence and the NBA fired and blackballed a ref. The NBA has recently suspended a player while it is looking into his gambling habits.
Why Miz Scahlet I nevah!
For fuck’s sake! Almost an admission? Of what, that extremely well paid NFL employees want to be fired from the best job they have ever had?
The conspiracy theorists ignore these basic realities. With the exception of Green Bay every NFL team is owned by ultra competitive billionaires who believe they are the center of the universe. They all want something that there billionaire buddies can never get, and the Lombardi Throphy is the ultimate “top that!”
Those owners have the ultimate power in the league. The commissioner works for them and if he displeased them they can simply not renew his $64,000,000.00 per year contract. Does anyone really think that these owners are willingly allowing their teams to be scuttled by rigged calls? For what purpose? If it is happening without their knowledge (while at the same time anonymous college football fans figured it out) the the commissioner is risking his $175,000.00 PER DAY salary for what purpose? The NFL officials average salary is $205,000.00 per year. If they lost their jobs because they were rigging NFL games they would be back to doing middle school games on Wednesday afternoons.
So, why are all these people acting against their self interest to make sure the team from America’s 33rd largest market keeps winning?
Really?
(^^This guy is in on it^^)
Jerry Jones continues to benefit from the increasing value of his franchise as are the other owners, so one could surmise that a WWE type script for the outcome of games is something all owners would buy into. That 35th TV market team is bringing a billion Tay-Tay fans along for the ride. The conspiracy could be why wouldn’t they all agree to a scripted outcome? Mahomes is in a million commercials. Don’t believe I’ve seen Josh Allen in one. And Dez caught that fucking ball! (IYKYK).
How much does Jerry Jones make from State Farm?
He shares in TV ad revenue like the other owners. He benefits when the value of the NFL overall increases thanks to stars like Mahomes…who he failed to draft.
So but for Mahomes, ad revenue dries up? You sure about that?
The nfl seems to make lots of ad money with or without Mahomes.
Ad revenue I think is driven by ratings which would be put at substantial risk should news of a vast game rigging conspiracy leak….
But fuck it. Why not put it at risk it for no return at all?!?
Its called bidness!
You have to admit though that getting guys to needlessly put their brains and spinal cords at risk for these billionaires is pretty courageous. I mean, I would probably put my hand up at the meeting and say:
“I could die or be committed to a wheelchair for life playing a rigged game but you’ll fine me for wearing the wrong socks?”
Pretty much any answer would be acceptable to me and Mr. Stingley.
Sure, Jerry Jones would agree to a plan where Lamar Hunt’s kid could get the annual “I got the biggest kick at the owners’ meeting” award.
How many of those “Tay Tay” teenyboppers buy licensed NFL merchandise?
Damn autocorrect. It is supposed to be “I got the biggest dick at the owners meeting award”
Conspiracy theories help people deal with a world that doesn’t make sense to them by providing plausible, believable theories of events. It is impossible to know everything, so we craft theories to fill in the blanks. Ironically, that’s partly why officiating is bad. The game is moving faster than 60-year-old referees can keep up (or most 20 year-olds, if we are being honest), so they must develop split-second theories about what happened to keep the game moving: where to spot the ball, who touched the ball last, balls or strikes, etc.
If Michael Jordan is going through the paint, and he loses the ball as he goes up for a dunk, the referees are blowing the whistle. Did they see a foul? Maybe. But our brains intuit that a foul likely occurred, so referees will call that foul whether they saw it or not. Why? Because it’s MJ. The same is true on pass interference or roughing the passer or the myriad judgment calls referees are asked to make with split-second blips of information with 100% accuracy. It’s impossible to get it right 100% of the time.
Imagine you have to watch two different events occurring simultaneously seven feet apart, and decide which event occurred first when they occur less than a tenth of a second apart. That’s a bang-bang play at first base. It is nearly impossible to see exactly what happened, so intuition is the go-to. You create what you believe to have happened based on available information, and just go with it… while millions of people are waiting on your call.
Fans have the benefit of replays and hindsight and can second-guess every single call. Which brings me to my ultimate gripe about officiating: We have the technology to get it right nearly 100% of the time, but we don’t use it. The call on the field (based on intuition and little else) is the default and technology must prove that the call is wrong. What a stupid premise. Why don’t we use the intuition of the guy watching a slow motion replay from ten different angles instead of the guy who had to make a gut call in the heat of the moment who was blocked out by twenty 300lb dudes? Why is that the default? Use all available tools to make the call right. If you make a bad judgment call, let someone in the booth reverse it. Eliminate ego and just get it right.
What’s a bad judgment call? There lies the problem. Is it a holding call missed? Is it reversing a roughing the passer call? Is it changing a DPI to OPI or vice versa? Replay really only can be used for calls that can objectively be proven or disproven. That’s what made us all freak out over the DPI/INT resulting in the bottle throwing episode in Austin. They used replay to overturn a judgment call.
MJ, Mahomes, etc are stars so they get the benefit of close calls….or….”Let’s give our stars the benefit of all calls if you want to keep your job”. Major League sports are highly produced and marketed entertainment. Why wouldn’t the owners want to protect and enhance value? That’s not conspiracy, that’s making a business decision. Why believe the WWE is fake but not the NFL? Is Jerry Jones the dumbest owner/GM over the past 30 years or the smartest to engineer the ever increasing value of all the franchises? Why else resist using more technology unless the increased transparency goes against their desires?
No, I don’t seriously believe in that level of collusion but then again, I lack any logical theory for what goes on. Occum’s Razor…???
Make professional and college officials available to the press after games. Let’s see how much their performance improves.
Conspiracy theories grow from lack of transparency.
I guess I should’ve added that to this…there feels like there’s a amount of “it is what it is” when gaffes occur in SEC games. I still find it interesting that the call at Texas, which was unprecedented, didn’t lead to further discussion or analysis of the rules. When Lanning utilized a little known loophole in the 12 men on the field penalty in their first tilt with tOSU, it’s interesting how the NCAA immediately made a change to the rule book.
You can polish my tin hat or tell me to spend more time in the microwave, but that is really, really bad optics.
But for the fact that someone would have outed the line judge at the 2018 natty placing him at great risk of torture and death, they might have those.
Between the money bet on games and the insane fandom, I don’t know how practical that would be.
(For the record, had I been placed in a room with the line judge who called Simmons off sides, and a claw hammer, after that natty game, he would have walked out in perfect health. I keed…. In actuality, Hannibal Lecter and Marcellus Wallace may well have taken notes for posterity.)
I do think it would behoove the supervisors of the officials to respond more credibly to some of the things we see happen in these games.
I think there is clearly a human element that goes into these things. I think some teams are better at working the refs than others. People can be biased without recognizing their bias.
At a minimum, the head referee should have to respond to post-game questions from the press.
And while we’re at it, the Playoff Committee’s discussions should be televised in full transparency of the metrics and values used to consider their rankings. If other polls reveal the selections of coaches, then the decision making and rationale of these members should be on full display.
Officiating is frustrating in all sports at all levels. As cpadawg points out above, it’s hard for practically anyone to keep up with in-game action on the field of play. So I understand why officials miss calls. What I don’t accept is that there isn’t efficient review even though the technology to do it has been available for years. In every sport, there could be quick review and accurate resolution of almost every play but instead we’re stuck with often cumbersome and time-consuming navel gazing that actually reinforces bad judgment. I can only assume it would cost more to do reviews right, which is why we’re not seeing it.
(BTW, I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to help the Chiefs but the NFL does try to protect its poster boys, notably QBs like Brady and Mahomes.)