[OT] NFL Playoffs - predetermined?

[jdavis]

To note:
Because you can't figure out a way it might be implemented, than the NFL being fixed is an impossibility?

That's a self-fulfilling truism, again.

For everyone, here's just 1 potential scenario that only involves 1 person:

What if it is common knowledge in the NFL that the players are playing at the whim of management? (It is)
What if they know they are incredibly lucky (one in a million) to be able to play a game for incredible amounts of money and priveledge? (It is)
What if they are fully aware that a player may someday be required to run "special plays"? (not known)
Therefore, noone asks questions when they see _inexplicable actions_ by professional players, and no reporters ask the players to explain their actions.

It takes one man - Dwayne Washington - to choose to "rough the kicker" after the ball was FAR gone (again, there was no way he could have possibly been in the play from where he lines up, OTHER than to participate in a "roughing the kicker" insurance play.)

It does take an entire industry to not ask questions.
A "gentlemanly agreement", with the future of The Sport in mind.

Until the common man stops assuming that it's impossible, than no sane journalist with a press pass will start asking those questions.

I was making a joke at how moronic the Head of Officiating looked when he all but admitted that he couldn't look at two different things that happened in the same play. It was sort of a can't walk and chew bubblegum at the same time type of joke. Fixing a game is sort of complicated and this guy apparently can't rewind a tape to look at a different thing that happened in the same play?

Is it possible that the game was fixed, well I guess so but they would have to be really stupid to do it in this game, I mean if you did it for betting purposes then wouldn't you want to do it in a game with a huge underdog so you could actually make money on the bet? You wouldn't really make money on this game as Tennessee was the favorite and the game was expected to be tight so odds just wouldn't be there. Would the league do it for ratings? well then they should of done it in the Atlanta/Phildelphia primetime game, not the game that they felt was going to do the weakest ratings wise and was on at a bad time to do great ratings anyway. So why screw Pittsburg, what is the reason, and why would they screw themselves out of all the money they would make if they won? Why would Pittsburg screw themselves? There just is no logic to any arguement you could put up except that Washington was intentionally trying to blow the game on his own for some obscure and worthless reason. Yes there could be some mechanic to them pulling the wool over our eyes but it would have to be a bad reason, they took a huge risk to fix a game just so Pittburg could screw itself just for the sake of screwing itself. Pittsburg gained nothing from this, the league ganed nothing from this, and Washington just made it harder for himself to keep his job next year. Give me one good reason for this, heck give me one bad reason for this. This was a poor game for gambling, the odds just were not there. This game means very little to the National audience who expects the Raiders to beat whoever they play, and if Tennessee does go to the Super Bowl it will probably be bad for ratings not good. The only reason that even remotely stands out is to screw Pittsburg out of a game they were doing a good job loosing on their own anyway, and why would Pittsburg screw itself? Do you know just how hard it would of been to set up that last play that way, I mean what if one of the Titans accidently blocked him, what if he actually blocked the kick, it's not like he was that late getting there, the kicker still had his foot in the air. What if he tripped, what if Cower had actually got the timeout he was trying to call. There is absolutely no reason for somebody to go through that much trouble to try and influence the outcome of a game that could accomplish no purpose but making one Pittsburg player look bad. There was no money to be made, there was no ratings to be upped in the final second, and there was no reason for anybody to do it except to cause the Seelers to loose, and the only people who could of done the fix were the Steelers. Yes it is possible for somebody to do it but they would have to be a complete moron to want to, or there is a secret organization out there that's sole purpose in existing is to screw the Steelers. There is absolutely no good reason to rig this game, there isn't even that many bad reasons to rig it.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I don't know much about the NFL but I can say this about sports and playoffs in general. Elite teams are so good at what they do the outcome of a game is pretty much a toss up. The team with the better incentive have a clear advantage over the other team. If one team has one game up on the other team and the game being decided right now is not the game that will win them the title or the opportunity to proceed then the other team has a better chance of winning.

Did you see Bad Lieutenant? Harvey Keitel is so sure that one team will fold in a playoff that he bets all his money on the outcome. The movie makes an interesting argument on this topic.

 

[schporto]

I'm gonna argue both sides in one post (I do not have multiple personality disorder).
Why the NFL might've wanted this game to end like this?
Well the Pit/Ten game was supposed to get the lowest ratings. It was supposed to be the 'worst' game of the bunch. Least exciting blah blah blah. Now instead we had a close, fairly exciting game, with a controversial call at the end. So now your average fooball fan is gonna say "Gee I wish I had watched that game, but everybody said it was gonna be a stinker. Guess I should watch all the games." So it was fixed to try to make the rest of the nfl crappy games look good. Biggest buzzword of the football season has been 'parity' or 'any given Sunday' not sure which I heard more. So this just lends itself to that.

Now, why it wasn't fixed.
If it was fixed, or even if Washington was trying to throw the game, why didn't he run into the kicker on the last kick? Why didn't someone from Pit run into him? Or do something illegal? What if Nedney had missed? What I'm saying is, if they were gonna fix it they wouldn't have fixed one play and not the other. The first kick Cower got the TO called. Just logically it don't quite add up. I mean its not like Washington could see that the second kick was gonna miss, the man never took his eyes off the kickers legs.

Complete Sidenote:
If football in general was found to be fixed or predetermined, they would have serious legal problems. I believe they would be guilty of fraud and probably some other things (illegal filing of incorporation etc). And they would kill their industry.

At the end of the day, no I don't think the game (or any football in the past 10 years at least) was fixed. There would be way to much to be lost and so little to gain. That the argument that - this is why you play the game - holds far more validity.
-cpd

 

[CTD]

Fixed or not, I have my opinion and it won't change the outcome.

I'll tell you though, what's really killing the game is technology. The ability to second guess the officials. The ability to view a replay and find out what really did happen. The ability for an announcer to replay a good pass and show you exactly where your defensive hero did the wrong thing and blew it.

It suspends all the fun.

It provides clairity.

It would be much better for the NFL if the fans didn't know for sure (via a televised replay) that Joe Runningback fumbled the ball before he was down by contact. It would be much better if the fans thought that Recever Dan had both feet down on his end zone reception, despite being called out of bounds.

By leaving the ambiguity in the game, and allowing the officials to be human (ie: wrong and not corrected by technology), you give people something to debate. Something to complain about. Something to be passionate about.

With the advent of technology, everything is broken down in finite terms and definitions. The mystery is gone. The suspense is gone. We all know that the QB is going to throw a sideline pass with 8 seconds left in the game because that will give the team another 8+ yards, stopping the clock with 3 seconds left and improving their odds of a successful field goal by 23.45893% which is better than kicking where they are...

This is the age of information (and I'm a computer technician not a Luddite), and it eliminates the human factor entirely. Which ruins the talk around the watercooler by giving facts instead of assumptions and differences in experience.

That talk is the key to fandom, which is the key to the longevity of the game as a money making national sport.

Or I'm an opinionated fool who thinks that the running into the kicker call was not a fix, it was a guy trying really hard to get that elusive block and save his team's future in the playoffs...

 

[Celebrim]

CTD: Well, I think you haven't hung out at enough water coolers if you think debate and passion have left the fandom of football. Since I never lived in one of the markets, and never grew up among pro football fans, I actually never had anything passionate to say or feel about football until I became a player of Fantasy Football, and that is all about stats and numbers. When I played FF, not only did I watch, listen on the radio, listen on web broadcasts and read the news fervantly, but I became fans of three or four teams by virtue of becoming fans of individual players whose character and skill I could admire. For instance, I cared about the Bucs because of Derrick Brooks - maybe the finest man in football and arguably for several years its finest defensive player. Now that I've stopped playing, I've also stopped watching.

So what I think is missing is not mystery, but involvement. In a world where everything is increasingly interactive, and the sports that people enjoy watching are increasingly the recreations they actual engage in - say snow boarding - simply watching people play a sport that you yourself have never player nor even aspired to playing is well increasingly dull. How many people younger than ourselves actually go out after school every day of thier childhood and play tackle football in someones back yard or in a cow pasture? How many youth's heroes are now Tony Hawk or Brian McBride or Harry Potter, and couldn't now name the quarterback of the NY Jets?

 

[Guilt Puppy]

I'll tell you though, what's really killing the game is technology. The ability to second guess the officials. The ability to view a replay and find out what really did happen. The ability for an announcer to replay a good pass and show you exactly where your defensive hero did the wrong thing and blew it.

I agree to a certain degree, but I can't say I want to deprive fans of the benefits of that technology... I prefer baseball's solution to the problem: The umpires do not review the plays, and there's this oft-spoken philosophy of "what the ump says is law, and it matters more than the instant replay." (I'm sure other sports do this as well; baseball and football are just the only ones I know well enough to say) It's sort of like Rule 0. And as we all know, Rule 0 is a good thing.

 

[Regdar]

Bah, it's possible but improbable. There was talk that the LA/Sac 7th game was a fix, since it was NBC's last year and the really unusually bad calls in favor of certain teams. The mob doesn't have the influence in the NFL that they used to, so Regdar doesn't think this is a fix.

Patriots vs. Rams may have been....

 

[dcas]

. . . as will the giants/49ers game with those bad (very very bad) hikes for the field goal kicker...I mean, a person plays for 19 years in the league messes up the hike that frickin bad is just ridiculous, something he's been doing for 19 years should be easy for him.

I don't know about that. I saw the whole game and I didn't think that either of Trey Junkins' "bad" snaps were really all that bad. The first one in particular should have been handled by the holder. And indeed, he got it down but in a bad position. The second one should have been handled, too.

Maybe NFL kickers should practice drop-kicking the ball. I think it's still in the rulebooks.

Yeah, and the bad referee's call and after the fact they even admit that they made a bad call and the giants would have had another chance and all that...

I'm not sure that ball was catchable. Also, I don't really see why a game shouldn't end on offsetting penalties -- is that really the rule? I know the game can't end on a defensive penalty.

 

[Storminator]

The game can't end of offsetting penatlies either.

PS

 

[Krug]

The all-star crew officiating seems clueless. Anyway, that "running into the kicker" penalty should never have been called. It's not even "roughing" and the guy took a dive.