It's becoming more and more evident every day... Notre Dame was a complete fraud.

The wheels are coming off the Fighting Irish -- Manti Te'o is particular.

And this has nothing to do at all with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo or the like (though I personally do wonder if people have to wonder about security and team secrets with him, but that is my opinion and mine alone...).

No, the latest debacle came at the NFL combine, when Manti Te'o ran a 40 that they had to clear everybody out of the building afterward to fumigate it!!  4.8 -- a "speed" which will leave him in the dust in the NFL, as his draft stock continues to tank.

He was a Heisman finalist and almost a lock for the top ten of the NFL Draft's first round.  Now?  Can't be found in the first round of any mock draft I can find.

Gil Brandt has him going 32nd to the Ravens, but John Harbaugh of the Ravens was openly seen shaking his head, as if to write Manti off the Ravens' draft board during that 40 run.

Not only is he slow for NFL standards, there are many people beginning to question if he was ever as big as he was advertised.

And the kicker:  I've had one ex-NFL fan friend of mine propose the possibility (but only that) that Te'o, after this whole debacle, may be trying to write a one-way ticket out of the National Football League and the limelight surrounding it.

One thing, however, is certain:  The continuing mountain of evidence that the sports media and the owners of college football rigged Notre Dame to a national title berth it never deserved is growing by the week.

Thanks, ESPN.  Really...

(for nothing)

He always wants his listeners to sound off like they have a pair...

Oh, JT...

JT the Brick, FOX Sports' overnight host, let his inner Knicks fan out tonight, I think, on Twitter.

If people are going to flame me for thinking sports are rigged, how can we let a national sports-talk radio guy get away with saying this on Twitter regarding tonight's Knicks-Warriors game (which the Knicks did win, 109-105)?

"I need the home court refs to bring this win home for the #Knicks. #Warriors #NBA"

Just a thought...

What's In A (Sports Stadium Corporate) Name?

Florida Atlantic University made the news last week -- for all the wrong reasons.

They officially have taken the thug nature of The National Religion to the next level!

They are at least close to a naming-rights deal for their football stadium with the GEO Group.

The GEO Group is a private prison firm -- notorious for abusive conduct of their prisoners.

Fits in right well with the current nature of football, especially down there in Florida and the like, don't you think?

---

This story got a friend of mine thinking, and asked me to do a research project...

Well, I found this article from Business Week...

It's a slideshow of the 23 NFL stadiums (including the currently-constructing Farmers' Field in Los Angeles) with corporate naming rights (as of August, 2011).  (9 stadiums do not.)

What my friend wanted to know is the correlation between the year of the contract and berths in the NFL playoffs.

So, let's group them by year:

1997:  San Diego.  (Qualcomm)  Chargers went 4-12, would not make the playoffs until 2004-05.

1999:  Washington (Fed Ex)  Went 10-6, won the NFC East and a playoff game.   First playoff berth in seven years; would be six seasons before they returned.

1999:  Tampa Bay (Raymond James)  Went 11-5, won the NFC South, defeated the aforemented Redskins in the Divisional Round.  Made the playoffs the next three years, culminating in a Super Bowl title.

2001:  Pittsburgh (Heinz -- though it should be noted that the Steelers and Heinz have had a long-standing partnership)  13-3, Home Field Advantage, lost to the Patriots in the controversial AFC Championship.

2002:  Saint Louis (Edward Jones)  After back-to-back Super Bowl trips, they went 7-9.  They did make the playoffs the next two years, though.

2002:  Philadelphia (Lincoln Financial)  12-4, Home Field Advantage, lost to Tampa Bay in the NFC Championship.

2002:  Detroit (Ford, though the Ford family has ownership of the Lions)  3-13, hadn't been to the playoffs in three seasons, would be 2011 before they got a playoff berth.

2002:  Houston (Reliant)  Their first season in the league, they went 4-12.  Would also be 2011 before they got to the playoffs.

2003:  New England (Gilette)  Already with one Super Bowl under their wing, they would win the next two.

2003:  Baltimore (M&T Bank)  10-6, win the AFC North.  Would be 2006 before they got back to the playoffs, but have been there every year since 2008.

2004:  Carolina (Bank of America)  7-9, would make the NFC Championship the next season.

2004:  Seattle (Qwest then, Qwest has been acquired by CenturyLink)  9-7, won the NFC West, second of five consecutive playoff appearances, defeated the aforementioned Carolina in the NFC Championship to get to the Super Bowl the next season, only to get ran over by the stripes.

2006:  Tennessee (LP) 8-8, would make the playoffs the next two years.

2006:  Phoenix (University of Phoenix) 5-11, would make the Super Bowl two years later.

2008:  Indianapolis (Lucas Oil, another long-time sponsor) 12-4, only got them the Wild Card.  (6 teams in the AFC were 11-5 or better, and, since none were in the AFC West, one of the 11-5s got left out!)  Lost in the Katrina Super Bowl the next year.

2010:  Minnesota (Mall of America)  6-10 after being one Khan Noonian Favre interception/Bountygate plot from making the Super Bowl.

2010:  New York (Met Life):  Giants went 10-6 and didn't make the playoffs.  (They'd win the Super Bowl the next year.)  Jets went 11-5 and lost to the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game.

2011:  Jacksonville (Everbank)  5-11.

2011:  Oakland (O.co/Overstock.com)  8-8.  Haven't been to the playoffs since the ill-fated Super Bowl with Jon Gruden.

2011:  Denver (Invesco)  8-8, "won" the AFC West and a playoff game with Tebow Time.

2011:  Miami (Sun Life)  6-10

So, to summarize:

Of the 23 teams with current corporate naming rights on stadiums:

10 made the playoffs.
5 more made the playoffs within two years.
At least a half a dozen had an imminent Super Bowl berth.

So could there be at least a playoff causation with new stadium naming rights in the NFL?  I'd say it's very possible!

A sports lawyer speaks out, but only gets it partially right...

(Hat-tip to Brian Tuohy on his Twitter for this one.)

Ryan Rodenberg, an assistant professor of sports law at Florida State University, had a very interesting column in The Atlantic on Thursday, concurrent with the major sports leagues and the NCAA being in a Federal court case to attempt to prevent the state of New Jersey from creating sports books.

I do agree with Brian that Rodenberg is one of the few people with any real knowledge of law that takes this kind of thing seriously.

Unfortunately, I don't think Rodenberg has a clue as to how pervasive a lot of this is, and how reliant the corporate sports machine is on manipulated/rigged/scripted results.

He begins by comparing what should happen to sports these days to the quiz show scandals of the 1950's.

Honestly, "My Little Genius" aside, one has to really wonder, these days, as to whether the FCC's declaration of competitive reality programming as "entertainment programming" (and, hence, legal to rig -- and has been declared as such directly since at least the fourth season of American Idol -- almost a decade ago!) has not bled back into game shows, basically allowing the producers at least a limited revocation of the resulting law from the 50's quiz scandals:  "Prohibited Practices in Contests of Skill or Chance".

That is a Federal Law which makes it a crime to rig a game show, and, likewise, a crime to assist in the production of a rigged show.

Given some of what I've seen over the last 5-7 years, however, I begin to wonder..

Two examples:

The complete changeover of The Price is Right to a bastardization of itself, where jokes and guest stars are more important than giving prizes away,

and that there hasn't been an up-the-tree millionaire on American Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? since Nancy Christy became the only woman to win the million on any American version -- in May of 2003!!.

(The only two million-dollar prizes given since on the US franchise were sweeps stunts.  Robert "Bob-O" Essig won a million in 2004, but needed only 12 of the 15 questions to do it, since the top prize on ABC's Super Millionaire was $10,000,000.  It was five years before a "Tournament of Ten" top winners of the early part of the 2009 10th-anniversary syndicated season (10 years of Millionaire, not 10 syndicated years) yielded Sam Murray's million-dollar win.)

But what I've noticed is that it appears that, with a number of possible mechanisms (insanely difficult games/questions, deliberately selecting contestants on how poorly they are expected to do, not how well they are expected to do, etc.), it could well be said that the shows are attempting to rig the games such that NO ONE wins.

So I'm not sure how Rodenberg basically can come to any conclusion similar to then-President Eisenhower, especially since, as one famous "NFL is rigged" video put it:

"Surely, the National Football League believes that the average NFL fan has the IQ of yogurt."

Anyway, Rodenberg then reviews the Dan Tan situation from Europol to Singapore.

Again, it is my contention that Dan Tan effectively runs international football now.  Any match, especially those in lower divisions where paychecks are sometimes in question and the like, can be rigged or scripted through his operatives.  One has to wonder, with this kind of power, what kind of "nuclear option" against sports his people have if he ever is dealt with.

Then Rodenberg mentions the current court proceeding and makes this claim of the six sports leagues suing New Jersey:

"Specifically, the sports leagues, in their August 7, 2012 complaint, say that New Jersey's plan would "irreparably harm amateur and professional sports by fostering suspicion that individual plays and final scores of games may have been influenced by factors other than honest athletic competition.""

The only people who don't "foster suspicion" that this is true, pervasive, and going on today (and for at least 35 years in the past, if you have ever read Interference) has no real clue of the corporate nature of sports.

Brian Tuohy has referenced two videos on his site effectively proving this.  Both are long and quite dry, so he basically touches on some of the highlights.

The first one is a website about a conference that Brian actually attended (hosted by Rodenberg) at the very same Florida State University last October, and a panel on sports manipulation.

The presentation showed some very interesting facts (and you can jump to the presented slides at the point they are presented in the video)

• (Slide 6, part of the "Is Point-Shaving Widespread?", as well as Slides 10 and 11):  Richard Borghesi talked about the Wolfers study in 2006, where the study examined over 44,000 college basketball games from the previous 17 years (presumably all Division I) to see how many games could be point-shaved.  He found that, admittedly, at least 1% of all games could be PROVEN rigged, and that 6% of strong favorites (double-digit favorites) have chosen to take a dive to benefit gamblers betting against them in the point spread.  This is basically covered up by the fact that the athletes can still claim they did try to win the game, but clearly were seen to have manipulated the game to benefit one "side" of the gambling -- the "side" against their covering the Vegas spread.
• It starts getting dry and mathematical here.  Eventually, the conclusion is that there isn't such a strong correlation that can be laid on point-shaving in the NBA or NFL (Slides 13-22).  Wolfers is also contradicted on the concept that it could be either that a strong favorite deliberately tanks on one side of the court/field or the other (offensive/defensive). (Slides 15-19)  This shouldn't surprise anybody who reads this site -- my belief is that, instead of getting players to tank in most cases, the leagues take direct control through officiating or other means to get the result they want -- for whichever of the multiple ways the result may be manipulated (the "correct" team going over, the most exciting result possible (total points or close game), or to aid Vegas one way or the other, to name just three).
• Then, by the time we get to Slide 30, we begin to enter similar ground to the Europol/Dan Tan situation in Europe, reported by Katarina Pijetlovic (and I hope I got that right!) of Estonia.  Slide 35 lists three such fixed events, one of which you can see here, one of the many Italian football fixes of the last few years:

• The other two are another farce where French handballers were accused of placing bets against themselves, and a doping scandal in the English Rugby League.
• After studying the above video in depth, she basically reports that, with less space for sports investigative reporting, fewer people willing to do it (I wonder why!!), and a lack of funding, the state of sports journalism is falling further and further short.
• This, however, does not preclude positive efforts in the genre -- the likes of Sporting Intelligence, PlaytheGame.org, and a site by Alexander Lebdev, The Journalism Foundation.
• It then goes into the problem in ATP mens' tennis of match-fixing, presented by ATP Associate Counsel Jeff Real.  After a (far too long for this forum) promotional video on the ATP Tour, Real gives a perspective on how the ATP is addressing the issue.
• Then Brian takes over and starts talking about some of the things you've already read on his site (and if you haven't, go do so) and in his upcoming book, Larceny Games.

It's the first statement which Brian makes in which I believe Rodenberg falls shortest in his 2/14/2013 Atlantic article.  Rodenberg notes, correctly:

"In a high-profile 1997 case concerning who owns real-time sports data under copyright law, the federal judge reasoned that "[u]nlike movies, plays, television programs, or operas, athletic events are competitive and have no underlying script.""

However, how does one juxtapose that with the 2010 Federal court decision in Mayer v. Belichick, New England Patriots, and National Football League, the Spygate trial which concluded the following:

First, even though:

"3. Plaintiffs contend that in purchasing tickets to the New York Jets that, as a matter of contract, the tickets imply that each game will be played in accordance with NFL rules and regulations, as well as all applicable state and Federal laws." 

Mayer did not suffer:

"actionable injury (or, in other words, a legally protected right or interest)"

What this effectively means, in short, is that he has no right but to a seat at a performance, the same seat that I might occupy for a concert at Davies Symphony Hall for Olivia Newton-John in San Francisco, or a Broadway Theatre to see a Disney production.

He has no right to a legal, lawful, nor legitimate contest -- and no recourse from same!

So, then, how does it serve a corporate sports league NOT to have an underlying script, especially with such advertising dollars (four million of them for 30 seconds at the last Super Bowl) in play?

And that's where I believe that Rodenberg's central thesis fails:  He talks about the concept of "uncertainty of outcome", and believes that such situations as manipulation are merely hypothetical.  Here's the problem, as Rodenberg's own article puts in large type:

"Published empirical studies have found increased fan enjoyment during buzzer beaters, certain pecuniary biases among sports referees, and heightened advertiser brand effectiveness following close contests. Leagues, broadcasters, and marketing agencies are surely aware of such studies, all of which probably mirror their own in-house analyses. Accordingly, they have a strong incentive to be tempted to act insidiously absent any explicit prohibition."

I would openly like to invite Mr. Rodenberg to examine a number of things and wonder if this is still merely hypothesis that the corporate sports leagues are manipulating results for maximum economic gain:

• The fact that, of the last six Super Bowls, five can directly be traced to game-deciding plays in the last minute, and the sixth is believed to have been a deliberate dive late in the fourth quarter to ensure a desired result.
• The fact that questions abound about every Super Bowl of this millenium, which can be anything from the above to "pecuniary biases among sports referees", etc.
• The entire Michael Jordan/Chicago Bulls era, where one study eventually showed that 70% of the league's fans were Bulls (more like Jordan) fans.  (And if fans really wanted uncertainty of outcome and would turn away from the league if the games were shown rigged, why is the NBA still in business over a decade after Jordan's last game, with the strongest belief among the major sports that the NBA is rigged?)
• And then we get to the second video...

Brian posted this August, 2012 conference in which some very interesting things were said:

Robert Dupuy, Esq.:  The President and Chief Operating Officer of Major League Baseball, said the following:

"We sell fantasy. We don’t sell reality. And we have grown men and women in costumes playing for millions of dollars, and more importantly enthralling tens of millions of people. And furthermore, we sell competition. Our teams and our athletes have to be bitter, bitter rivals and competitors on the field of play, but they’ve got to be partners off the field of play. And we need rules. We sell uncertainty of outcome, and so we need rules, both playing rules and frankly, we need economic rules."

Note the admission, whether he intends it or not.  He says the following two statements:

"We sell fantasy.  We don't sell reality."

and

"We sell uncertainty of outcome..."

That's a dangerous juxtaposition if you don't want me to state that the games, then, have to be manipulated because of the status of the teams/athletes as off-the-field corporate partners.  (Which is exactly what I believe.)

And then DeMaurice Smith, chief of the NFL Players' Union, adds: 

"Isn’t the reality that it’s a business when owners want it to be a business and it’s a sport when they want it to be a sport and for a fan it’s—and I agree with you—it’s a fantasy."

How does one not draw the conclusion that that fantasy is a contrived, scripted, controlled series of events?

So I'd ask Mr. Rodenburg, given these comments, how a similar situation to quiz shows in the 1950's not only exists in sports today, but is their modus operandi?

And yet two more examples of the complete farce of "college" football...

It's bad enough when you have a Heisman favorite, entering his junior year, actually considering sitting out the year rather than risk injury.

That's a post in and of itself, but I've got two more for you.

First, Florida State, thanks to Miami's ineligibility issues, had to play a 6-6 Georgia Tech team to win the ACC Championship and participate in this year's BCS.

To show how complete of bullshit this was:  Florida State now owes the conference nearly a half a million dollars.

Nobody was interested in seeing Florida State vs. Georgia Tech.

And I mean NOBODY...  The ACC might've said nearly 65,000 tickets were distributed, but not close to half of them were sold, and you could've gotten in for five bucks by the time the game was starting, according to one reputable ticket site.

Each team is given a block of 10,000 tickets to sell.  So few people were interested in the sham which became the ACC Championship Game that Florida State could not nearly 4/5 of that amount, resulting in a contractual $440,000 loss.

The ACC is looking into ways this can be prevented.

Hey, morons:  How about just ignoring "The Show Must Go On" and recognizing that there are games which just SHOULD NOT BE PLAYED...

And that wasn't the only conference title game which should've been scrapped.  Too bad the other game which should've been scrapped was actually won by the team which never should've been there (third-place Wisconsin).

And then we get to the latest debacle out of our two-time defending national champion, Alabama.

It now appears that at least three "student"-athletes will be thrown out of the school entirely (they are banned from the campus pending campus judicial review, them and a fourth are suspended off the team, and all face charges) for a series of assaults and thefts on the Tuscaloosa campus.

Three of them took part in a pair of assaults on the campus, and a fourth is charged with the use of a stolen credit card.  Someone has to explain to me how, under NCAA rules, Tyler Hayes, Eddie Williams, and DJ Pettway had $60-65,000 to post bail...

Three of the four players are 20, so it's evident that those three have probably been there for both national championships.  The other is 18, probably meaning he was a freshman.

But to take the step to expel them, during classes, from the campus indicates that they probably are not coming back.

Welcome to the Alabama Penitentiary League, motherfuckers.

When is somebody going to finally see all the fire for all the smoke which has been rising from the Rolling Crimson Tide...

Around the bowl and down the hole, Roll Tide Roll...

And take the farce of "college" football with you...

Five-Ringed Circus: It's All Fun And Games...

... until we inevitably find out that someone is dead at the hands of yet another beloved athlete.

This time, it's Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee who became the first such athlete to compete in the regular Olympic Games in track and field.

And, now, this Feel-Good Story -- like, it seems, every other damn one, has come crashing down to Earth...

He now stands accused of murder in his native South Africa.

It appears as if a domestic situation was settled with a gun -- he shot his girlfriend four times.

And this isn't the first such problem he's had.  Between crashing a speedboat and getting in continued altercations over women (though he had been dating his victim, one of the 100 Sexiest Women in the World by one of the cheesecake magazines, for a few months)

Don't we hear about this all the blasted time?

I mean, seriously!!!

It seems that every time we have this kind of stuff about such a Feel-Good Story that the corporate sports world wants to jam down our throats, it is almost inevitable that it ends in something like this.

And I am utterly convinced we haven't heard even the beginnings of this:  I fully expect the ensuing investigation to literally blow the doors off of Pistorius to the point that he will be exposed as a complete fraud, on top of that he's a murderer too.

Thanks, asshole.

Really...

Dan Tan Runs Soccer -- He's Also Ruined It!

In the Brian Tuohy interview Monday, he starts off talking about a New York Times article Monday on the massive investigation, taken over 19 months, into an international game-fixing operation out of Singapore, which soccer-rigging expert Declan Hill centers around kingpin Dan Tan.

Europol has reported that it has belief of the probable fixing, by Tan and his associates, of almost SEVEN HUNDRED games -- half of them in Europe.

Here's probably the highest-profile tidbit of them all:  One of the games that it is believed Tan his put his tentacles in was no less than a Champions' League game (the European year-long club championship tournament - highest honor for club football in Europe!), taking place in England!!

They said it probably has taken place in the last 3-4 years.

Manchester United?
Arsenal??
Liverpool???
Chelsea????

(The other two teams which might've been involved are Manchester City and Tottenham.)

You get why this is such a devastating claim.  Now, this certainly could also have been an action for the opponent to take a dive.  But consider this scenario:

A major English club needs three points and help to get into the knockout phase.  Hundreds of thousands of pounds are involved (not only to the club, but to sponsors, bookies, the EPL itself, etc. and so forth and so on!).

What if it is now common knowledge to get in touch with Dan Tan The Man in Singapore if you need something THAT badly, even if you are a Manchester United, which is the first sporting franchise in history to be worth over THREE BILLION DOLLARS.

Reported bribes by the syndicate, in some cases, were well into six figures in American money.  Literally one was reported at $136,000.

Now, think about this:  This guy in Singapore has enough money, muscle, power, and connections to offer somebody (and it could've been an official as much as a player) that kind of money.

Wouldn't one easily be able to, then, conclude that Dan Tan effectively runs soccer -- and that the reality in corporate sport is much closer to my theory that every match which can be fixable is fixed?

Something to keep an eye on...

Why?

Consider the following possibilities:

How about all that cricket controversy which has gone on over the years in Asia?

How about that Olympic badminton scandal of fixed matches at the London Games?

If we really want to go there:  How about the video game leagues in Korea (which can be gambled upon!) that players around the world see on Twitch?  What's to say that Tan doesn't have a stake in those too?

Hell, what's to say he wasn't involved in the controversial Worlds tournament of League of Legends last year here in the United States and the whole Azubu Frost fiasco?

Super Fraud XLVII -- How 108,000,000 people got played like fiddles...

I am fully aware of the hue and cry for San Francisco dcto get the ball at the 1 down 34-29 with a little less than two minutes to go.

What a lot of people don't realize is how completely and utterly fooled the better number of 108,000,000 Americans (the preliminary ratings, about a 3% drop from XLVI!) were.

You basically were led along and strung along, and I'm going to show you how that all worked.

• Second to the last play of the first quarter, Baltimore is leading 7-3 and has the ball on the San Francisco 37, second and 13.  Flacco throws a pass on the far sideline to Smith, incomplete.  Replays show, and the announcers confirm, several probable flags on the play.  Smith is being hand-checked, illegal-contacted, probably held and/or interfered with.

Flacco is sacked out of field-goal range on the next play.  Very probably, that non-call took at least 3 points off the board for Baltimore, if not 7.

At that point, I make mental note of that, in case San Francisco eventually wins the game.

• Then all Hell breaks loose!!  After at least two separate incidents of post-play taunting and backtalk between the teams, with about 7:00 to go in the second quarter, Colin Kaepernick throws an interception to Ed Reed, and the entire game breaks down into about a 15-man scrum.  Someone please explain to me why NO ONE was ejected on the play, especially when at least one official was seen on replays during the scrum being thrown over the pile.

That one's more a pet peeve.  What happens next is a real head-scratcher...

• 3:12 to go in the first half, Baltimore is now up 14-3 and setting up for a medium-short field goal.  Instead, and for reasons I cannot otherwise discern, they decide to fake the kick, have the kicker run to the short side of the field, where he is angled down 1 yard short of the first down.

#1, why do you fake that and not take the 3 to go up 17-3?  You're dominating the game, San Francisco has no answers for you, and you've already had points left on the field once.

After a three-and-out, a long pass just after the 2 minute warning makes it 21-3, where 27-3 or 31-3 were  very probable.  San Francisco then gets down the field and stalls for a field goal.

Viewers are tuning out the game, and even more so after the opening kickoff is returned for a touchdown in the second half, making it 28-3 and a probable 38-3.

And then, the lights go out.

It is undeniable fact that viewers were leaving the game in droves.  SI reports that Nielsen noted that the power outage alone cost the game two full ratings points -- and this is death when you consider that advertisers were paying a full $4,000,000 for 30 seconds of ad time!

Keep this in mind!!  Because, as people are discussing the impact of the lights, the game is delayed 35 minutes.

So what was it?

• My first thought was a reinforcing or handing-out of how the rest of the game is going to go to allow the game to turn into the biggest rout in years.  5 of the last 6 Super Bowls went to the last minute, and the 6th was basically close until a suspicious Peyton Manning pick-six with under four minutes to play turned a tying drive into the final margin.
• Or was it something other ex-NFL fans told me...  That the blackout WAS the script -- a final "all-stop signal" that the game was basically out of control and the NFL had actually hit the lights to change the game materially.

Again, no matter where the ad fell in the game, people were paying $4,000,000 for 30 seconds of commercial time for that 100-million+ audience.

==

If you're into Alex Jones, he got Brian Tuohy on his show today to talk about the power outage and why it might well have been staged (as well as the reports from Europe on the continuing exploits of Dan Tan)...

(If you can't stomach Alex' shtick and want to get to the interview, it starts about 3 minutes into the clip.)

==

When the lights came back on, San Francisco and Baltimore traded 3-and-outs.

With 7:53 to go in the third, San Francisco has the ball just on Baltimore's side of midfield, down 28-6.

By 3:14 to go in the third, San Francisco has clawed back to 28-23 with three scores in just under four minutes.

And, thanks to the Twitterverse, people were getting back in front of their televisions, their football fandom in one hand and their commercial-viewing eyes in the other.

Then...

• Second minute of the fourth quarter.  Baltimore's ball on the San Francisco 1, second down.  So they plunge into the line, inexplicably pass, and then TAKE THE FIELD GOAL?

31-23, of course, sets up the probability of...  OVERTIME!

Baltimore has left at least ten points on the field.  3 or 7 by the officials, 7 more by their "play-calling".

• And then you can easily ask how Kaepernick threw to Randy Moss on the two-point attempt.  Nothing against Moss personally in that case -- just, more- why does Kaepernick not try to get the 2 with his feet?

But Brian Tuohy points something out you can see here:

Stop it as soon as you get the opening picture.  Ed Reed is offside, in the neutral zone.  Missed cleanly.

• Then, on the next drive, why are you throwing if you're Baltimore, 3rd-and-2 at the 20 with 4:28 to go, up just the 2 points?  The incomplete pass is a time-out for a team which has already wasted one.  Even Brian Tuohy figured this one out:

"Can't have a Ravens TD there, could we? Can't seal the deal too early. Need at least a chance at a 49ers comeback win."

• Then the (no-)call that has San Francisco up in arms.  34-29 down, 1:50 to go, 4th and goal at the 5.  Kaepernick to Crabtree incomplete.

Crabtree gets MUGGED.

We are talking he could've gone to the police and filed the charges on Smith here.

So why does this happen?

To ensure the proper result.  Jim Harbaugh is about to get fined (and I could see half-a-dozen or so fines from this game), probably because The Ray Lewis Thuggin' It Up Appreciation Tour trumped even the homophobic bigotry of no fewer than THREE San Francisco 49ers leading up to the game.

Harbaugh went off, but even he probably is playing a part, or being hoodwinked.

Why?  Let's review:

• First quarter:  Refs take 3-7 from Baltimore for blatant missed call on Ravens drive.
• Second quarter:  Refs don't thumb out several players for big fight between unsportsmanlike teams.
• Second quarter:  Ravens take 3 more off the board with inexplicable fake.
• Third quarter:  After the power outage and the first surge back by the Niners, Baltimore may well have left 4 more points on the field with another inexplicable call to take the field goal from the 1.

That easily could've been 44-48 points that Baltimore scored Sunday night.

Why not?  For the same reason that the refs no-called the blatant mugging in the end zone.

For $4,000,000/30 seconds, the NFL needed the game down to the last freaking play.

Had to.  Again:

1) Corporate sports require manipulated results.
2) The House Always Wins.

Northern Nevada casinos made a MINT off of people thinking San Francisco was going to win the game.  The game broke all legal Nevada handle records.

You got played.

America, once again, in it's ultimate blind worship to it's National Religion, got hoodwinked again!

Just another note for all the football-obsessors out there...

The last six Super Bowls:

42:  Giants 17 - Patriots 14 -- touchdown with :35 left wins it after incredible Tyree catch.

43:  Steelers 27 - Cardinals 23 -- touchdown with :35 wins it.  Controversial Warner "fumble" negates Hail Mary chance with :15 left.

44:  Saints 31 - Colts 17 -- largely believed to be known-rigged and Peyton Manning was notified of the dive. 

45:  Packers 31 - Steelers 25 -- Steelers fail on downs less than a minute to go.

46:  Giants 21 - Patriots 17 -- Winning touchdown at :57 to play.  Brady Hail Mary ball in the air at the gun.

47:  Ravens 34 - 49ers 31 -- Stanford-Cal possibility at the gun, scripted from Ravens up 28-6 to ensure the game is in doubt to the last play.

So the only question now is about the power outage:  Was that when the NFL reinforced the storyline, or stepped in to create a new one to get people to keep watching what was turning into the biggest blowout in years???

5 of the last 6 Super Bowls -- and, going back, 9 of the last 14 -- basically decided on the last play or the last relevant play within the final minute.

When are you people going to learn that you are being played like fiddles????

Super Farce XLVII -- Down to the Last Play

Who could not have seen THAT coming?

Baltimore leaves points on the field three times, as if they are designing for exactly what went down.

Not a Hail Mary this time, but a possible Stanford-Cal at the end goes awry, and the Ravens win it.

Good riddance to this football season.

The House ALWAYS Wins.  Even at 28-6, they get the game to be decided on the last play!

Super Farce XLVII -- Super Facepalm

Now 31-29 Baltimore, and only because SF threw for the 2 and missed.

A Kaepernick scramble probably gets the 2.

This after Baltimore leaves another 4 points on the table, 4th-and-goal from the 1.

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING.

Super Farce XLVII -- OH COME OFF OF IT!

Did someone get the script mailed to them during that power outage?

Since:

SF 3 and out.
Baltimore 3 and out.
SF Touchdown.
Baltimore 3 and out.
SF long punt return, 2 plays, another Touchdown.

Was 28-6.

Now 28-20.

UPDATE:

Baltimore turnover inside their 25.
SF 3 and out.
Misses the field goal, but Running Into the Kicker on Baltimore!

Now 28-23!!!

Super Farce XLVII -- More Comedy Bang For Your Buck

"That's the night when the lights went out in...  New Orleans!"

Good grief.

KO return for 109 yards for a touchdown.  Now should be well into the 30's...

And then the lights go out in the stadium!

The Superdome's power went out!!

28-6 -- should be 34-6 or 38-6.  Game delayed early 2nd half.

UPDATE:  Game has resumed.  Police reported a gas smell in the Superdome.

Super Farce XLVII Anything But Super

Went out for a late lunch, could not avoid the game if I tried unless I holed myself up at home.

Already two blatant attempts to keep this game from getting completely out of control for Baltimore, who's kicking an inept 49er team's butts all over New Orleans:

• Baltimore, 2nd and 13 at the 37 of SF.  Late 1st quarter.  Flacco incomplete to Smith, who was held, illegal contacted, and interfered with on the play.  Next play was a sack, might well have taken a field goal off the board, if not a TD.
• Baltimore, 4th and 10 at the 15 of SF, setting up for a late 2nd quarter field goal up 14-3.  So why, then, do you direct-snap to the kicker and have him run to the short side of the field?  Needed 10, got 9.

What is now 21-6 should be 27-6 if not 31-6!!

Super Fraud XLVII: Could Bigotry and Homophobia Decide the Outcome???

(EDIT:  Surprised no one thought I was posting from the year 2033!)

Let's make no secret:  The NFL is the homophobic of the major sports leagues.

It's not close.

Would I be shocked to someday learn of an NFL player murdered by his teammates because he came out?

No chance.

So two stories out of the San Francisco 49ers media make me wonder if the most accepting city of the LGBT community is actually housing a hypocritical bunch of twits who, because they fly the flag of "REAL MANHOOD!!", they might well get the benefit of the calls which we all know have decided the Super Bowls in the post-9/11 era, with the SWATS story being the last straw to take the Ray Lewis Thuggin' It Up Appreciation Tour and derail it.

Chris Culliver WOULD be suspended in the other three major sports (The NBA would do it immediately -- reference two teams who probably lost their chance at the championship the Mavericks eventually won by homophobic slurs -- Noah at the fans and Kobe at a referee!!  The NHL would review it, but almost certainly suspend -- cross-reference the player who got suspended for making a blowjob gesture at another player.  MLB?  How bout that guy last year who put a homophobic slur on his eyeblack!!) if he made this ghetto piece-of-shit comment which he tried to back down from:

"No, we don't got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do. Can't be with that sweet stuff. Nah."

FUCK YOU.

You are the San Francisco 49ers, bitch.

Maybe this nine-year veteran of the streets of San Francisco needs to educate your small brain and your even smaller penis. 

I hope that, in the unfortunate event you get a Super Bowl ring that the world-famous Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence protest your involvement in the upcoming parade, moron.

Get with the 19th century...

For the record, long-time San Francisco sports-talker Damon Bruce has actually called for the 49ers to cut his ass.

Or is that the norm in the NFL?  It now appears that two members of the 49ers who performed in an anti-gay-bullying video (the only team in the NFL even to dare conduct such an act) glossed over their involvement, if not denied it entirely...

Ahmad Brooks:  "This is America and if someone wants to be gay, they can be gay. It's their right. But I didn't make any video." 

After being shown the video, Brooks again:  "Oh, that. It was an anti-bullying video, not a gay (rights) video..."

It's both, idiot!

Isaac Sopoaga:  “We didn’t know what we were recording was to help gay kids — we don’t want to do that.” 

WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

WHO

THE

FUCK

ARE

YOU??

The only way that the NFL doesn't have literally dozens of gay players, if you are anywhere near a cross-section of the country, is if they've already killed a few of them to scare the rest off, you sanctimonious fuck.

----------

And here's the sickest irony of the entire situation:  Those stands might be the tipping point in the most political Super Bowl in history.

Between the drugs, the exploitation of the Newtown, CT shootings, and all this bullshit, one has to wonder if homophobia and bigotry might be the tipping point so that San Francisco gets that one rip-off call that you all know is coming...

When I started looking at this game two weeks ago, I was 100% that Baltimore was going to win.

Now, I'm a very uneasy call.  My pick, as of the moment, is Baltimore in a low-scoring affair, 16-13.

But I no longer have any confidence in it.