It says-

So evidently baseball, basketball and hockey are already doing this. And if that's true, I don't see the big deal over it.

 

They literally let a POS who not only is an evident woman beater, get away scott free with breaking his 3 year old sons arm and punches him in the chest.

I'm not totally out, but my eyebrow has been raised in regards to that BS.

And as far as the gambling? This has been evident for years, just now "official" inside info is being released.

Vegas knew Todd Gurley wouldn't play much in the SB the day after the conference championships... nothing new.

 

I don't think the NFL is "rigged" per se. I mean.. would you choose the SB matchups we've actually seen if you wanted to grow revenue for the NFL as much as possible? Where's Dallas? Dallas is the NFL's most valuable franchise and it hasn't seen the SB since the 1995 season!

I also don't think NE winning all those SB's is maximizing growth in the game. If I was in charge of "rigging" games I'd try to give the largest possible fanbase as much hope as possible and we'd see greater diversity of teams in the SB and no persistent bottom feeders like Cleveland.

Having said that I do think there are biased refs and some bad actors, and a preference for higher rated games might shift things in one direction more than another, but the final outcome I really doubt is actually predetermined.

Regarding this particular piece of news I think it's just the NFL acknowledging that there's no way they can prevent the growth of legalized sports betting in the US and that either they make billions giving real-time data to the betting operations or someone else will. The NFL has long worked to prevent the growth of legalized sports betting, so from that perspective they've been better than the other major leagues.

 

I don't see the controversy here. The overall moral issue with gambling aside, this is just live game provided for enhanced betting- 'in play' bets etc.

Maybe I've missed it. How is this any sort of rigging?

 

Its not rigging. And while I don't ever gamble myself, I also don't have a problem with other people doing it. But at the same time, I still wish that it would stay in the background and not be all over the TV and internet. Seeing it all over the place cheapens the overall experience for me.

 

Sports betting is a multi billion dollar industry and football is the bread and butter of that. No matter what stance they take or did take they absolutely LOVE people betting on the game. They promote it in a sneaky way.

 

The real danger is certain positions, particularly QB and OL become very susceptible to fixing various events.
Will a particular play (e.g. first snap of a team’s 3rd drive be a run or a pass? If the QB is in on the deal you can change what should be a 50-50 bet into a 100% payoff that would be difficult to detect.
Will there be a false start penalty on a particular play? Again it would be hard to detect unless there was some leakage from the bettors.

There is less scope for this to work on defenders because they have much less control over specific events, but there is still some scope for situational bets especially pre-snap penalties.

 

Okay so it might open up the NFL to greater temptation towards, and opportunity for, fixing events, but every sport is open to that, and there are, I believe, heavy consequences for fixing events in other sports. I assume the NFL will also come into line. Regardless, the players would have to be complicit to some extent and not every play, not even most players, would be up for that (unless a culture of corruption creeps in).

I don't think this will be a major issue. Soccer/Premiership Football has had in-play betting for ages.

 

This is a nice wiki page for reference. A list of match fixing incidents in sports:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_match_fixing_incidents

Apparently there was an attempt to fix the 1946 NFL championship game. Otherwise not much in American football. But check out soccer (Association Football). One after another of pretty huge match fixing incidents, some involving the best club teams in the world with refs in on the act and in some cases actual physical tampering with parts of the stadium (tampering with the floodlights to end a game early lol). The baseball section is also large but really minor in severity compared to soccer.

 

Except Soccer is a world wide sports and that lists represents multiple leagues across the planet. The NFL is one league.
In addition, the leagues learn and adapt as things are tried. The reality is that if fixing games becomes too common fans lose interest. The league obviously has an interest in keeping it as clean as possible. I think I might even argue that culturally the USA is different enough from Europe that there will be fewer players and officially morally open to fixing. At least for now.

 

When I lived in Davie growing up, I absolutely loved Jai Alai and the horse track. Over time I got extremely good at handicapping matches but every now and then, Jai Alai would take an insane turn where great players didn't try, people suddenly couldn't serve the ball in bounds, etc. And I'd think- those few matches have to be rigged.

Well, a few years later, I met a Dania Jai Alai player by chance and friended him (he moved into my neighborhood). I told him that I loved the sport and went a few times per week, and he told me, "Hey, if you go tonight bet a 7, 8, 5 trifecta in the 12th". To make a long story short, for that combination to happen, it's going to be a very long match because it's statistically improbable....the 1, 2, and 3 teams have a much better chance of coming in the money due to the rotation of matches. But sure enough, it came in 7, 8, 5 and I won almost $1,200 on a $2 bet.

Months later, the Jai Alai player explained to me that a few matches per week were rigged by the venue- almost always on the busiest night when there was the most betting. So the players decided- screw that, we're rigging one for ourselves as well. And a few times per week, they'd intentionally throw matches for their friends and family to bet on. They'd each make an extra $1500-2500 per week off just two games.

Why'd I tell this story? If the NFL is "rigged", it's likely not by the league...it would be too complicated and you'd need too many people to be in on it. If it happens, it would be by the refs or certain players themselves...and only in very brief instances. For instance, that Pitt game where we got the fumble on the goal line yet somehow it remained Pitt ball at the 1- that one play decided the game and I think the head ref did it on purpose.

Or sometimes we've had drives where we got holding back to back to back....with 5 people blocking, there's holding on every play folks. They usually just call the obvious holds and let the rest slide, so that's an easy way to kill a drive by the refs. But we don't see that a ton so I don't think a lot of games are rigged (if any). We did see some pretty serious pass interference that wasn't called at the end of both conference playoff games last year though, so maybe you can "rig" a game just off a few calls (or no calls) alone. That's the only way I could see it consistently happen because it would be ultra hard to coordinate and keep people quiet.

 

We will all have to check out of life because the entire world is rigged and corrupt. Always has been. Always will be.

......and thank God for that.

 

Do you think college football is any better?

 

College football is inherently corrupt, so long as they use a poll to determine who plays for the championship. Whether gambling influences it, or to what degree, I have no idea.

 

of course sports is rigged. The mafia/bookies invented pro sports leagues to begin with.
thats never changed.
how rigged is it? the Niners vs Pats will be the SB and the Redskins will make the playoffs.
its already decided before games are played.

 

degenerates? the Rooney's, Bidwill's and most others, made their fortune through gambling. because they already knew who would win/lose.
the nfl was founded on it. then tv came and they made it a show while ripping you off

 

The Redskins are 1-8....lmao.

 

Meh,small side dish to the main course.
I'll ride that though till they have 10 losses or dallas pulls away

 

You seem to miss the mark entirely. Soccer is a world wide sport with Fifa as its governing body.
If you can fix games with Fifa in charge. You can damn well fix one country, rinky dink league.

 

I think that perhaps you missed my point. I was referring to the match fixing lists in that article. You can't compare American Football to Association Football because the American Football list is taken from only one league, whereas the Association Football lists represents match fixing from leagues across the globe. I'm not deny that match fixing exists. I'm saying that in western world leagues it is controlled as far as possible, and they will always seek to control and eliminate it in large part. If they don't it will damage the gambling industry overall. Fixed matches means unfair gambling. There's more to lose than to gain by systemic match fixing.

 

Actually, it's legal to bet on American pro wrestling in England. Gamblers invented pro leagues for betting. That means since day one. A large number of people already knew they were betting on a fixed outcome.
Gamblers would be just as interested if it's known it's staged. Frankly, there's plenty in betting forums now, who agree/know/believe it's staged and they are still involved. I know its staged.

 

Just treat it as what it is. Entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less.
I like sports aesthetics.. it' male bonding fun time. I like sports uniform history and designs/Helmets. Collectables. I wear jerseys around the house lol

 

Lol the 3 onside kicks by ATL are blatant proof its fixed

 

A soccer game is incredibly easy to fix by the simplistic nature of the sport.

A football game, youd need either blatant ref help or the players all in on it to fix every game. Even the NBA is much easier due to dictating free throws/points.