How Can Anyone Think The Games Are Legit? By Obfuscating the Subject...

Brian Tuohy (EDIT re:)posted (due to NFL takedown -- gee what a shock), after week 17, a compilation video of either erroneous or highly controversial calls which have changed the 2013-14 NFL season:



Just on quick inspection:

• He starts with the play which effectively finished deciding the most recent Super Bowl, the holding non-call on the Ravens on the conversion try for San Francisco in New Orleans.
• The entire debacle of the Week 1 showdown between the Packers and San Francisco.  (Oh, and who has the league manipulated into the prime Sunday slot for Wild Card Weekend:  Oh my gosh!  Green Bay vs. San Francisco!!!)
• The late hit call which aided the Jets in beating Tampa Bay in Week 1.
• Or the late hit call which aided the Packers in their division-clinching victory over the Bears last week...  (I would place that, more, in the "awfully literal" part of the rules.  It did look like a third Bear in the play had pulled up to prevent such a flag.)
• Going back to the 2011-12 playoffs, a screwjob forcing the Lions out on a non-called fumble against Drew Brees (not that unlike the Tuck Rule fiasco).
• Or how about three calls which were deemed in error to aid in causing their 22-14 week 13 loss to the Indianapolis Colts.  (whom I believe will play Denver at some point in these playoffs)
• Falcons-49ers (Week 16, Monday night), and a non-call across the middle eerily reminiscent of the Super Bowl non-call referenced earlier.  The 49ers won 34-24, giving them a playoff spot.  (See above for the ramifications.)
• The Terence Garvin fiasco.
• But then the Patriots are called for putting someone illegally into the backfield against the Jets, leading to a game-winning field-goal retry in   (Week 7, Jets won 30-27 in overtime.) "Hard Knocks" calling for Rex Ryan, on the red phone please.
• The screwjob in the first Monday night in San Diego on their game-winning field goal attempt.  (One of the two wins -- the first two weeks -- Houston would get.)
• Week 13:  Refs screw up a first-down call in Washington vs. the Giants.  (And a nice video afterward of someone who Brian thinks "gets it".)
• A bad non-fumble call (and a probable missed helmet shot too!) Denver vs. Indianapolis, Week 7.  Indianapolis won 39-33...  in a match-up I believe you will see again in January.
• But then the discussion on the penalty in the Saints-49ers game for a hit up around the neck (Week 11).  (If they're going to punish for "head AND NECK" (emphasis mine), then that should be a penalty.)  Saints won 23-20, and are in the playoffs.
  
• Lions-Ravens, Week 15.  Bad pass interference no-call.  Ravens win 18-16 to aid in being relevant in Week 17 -- Lions weren't relevant in Week 17.  See you Jim Schwartz.
• The mugging in the end zone I've referred to previously between Carolina and New England.  Carolina, as a result of this play, won 24-20 in Week 11.  Both teams earned first-round byes.
• And another PI no-call against New England.

And then he says (sarcastically):  None of this effects the playoffs.

Even of the calls above:

• Detroit was 8-8.  Win that game, they win the division at 9-7.
• Carolina doesn't get that first-round bye if they don't win the division.  Needed every win they could get to get it.
• San Diego needed every win to get in at 9-7.
• 49ers earned a playoff spot in the game with Atlanta.
• Packers-Bears, Week 17?

And that's before he gets to this:

• Botches all over the place in Packers-Steelers.  (Eventually making the Steelers relevant in Week 17, forcing the Bears to lie down to the Eagles, etc. and so forth and so on.)
• The play clock at 0 on the first fourth-down play of the final Packers touchdown to get in the playoffs over the Bears.  (Not quite "Game Over", Brian.  It'd have been 4th and 5+, but they'd have had to do it again.)
• The Chargers overloading their line in a field-goal attempt against Kansas City.  (Same rule that the Jets got the call on against New England, see above.)  Oops.  Chargers win to go 9-7 and make the playoffs.
• The call that I never saw earlier in the Green Bay-Chicago game.  Rodgers back to pass, appears to pass, but called a fumble, everybody stops.  Rodgers, not hearing a whistle, yells for the Packer receiver to pick it up -- Touchdown Green Bay.
• Another bad call in a pile in the San Diego-Kansas City game, again benefitting San Diego.  The skinny is that it is believed this is to help the case for a new stadium in San Diego to keep the Chargers there.
• A play-clock fiasco in the finale.

Brian's conclusion:  "The NFL is manipulating games right before your eyes."

Quote-unquote.

And anyone who still believes this is either too stupid to know the truth about football (and I speak in all facets of said "truth") or is moving the goalposts on the discussion.

Like this guy:  A purported sports betting account on YouTube that had this to say about how people believing games were fixed (and that concept being a myth) costs people money when they bet sports.

The problem here is several-fold:

1. He says that the concept of sports being fixed is used to explain away improbable outcomes.  (Emphasis mine.)  The problem lies that the fix doesn't usually deal with improbable outcomes, but ones which ignore athletic reality, either in the concept of the effort of the player (taking a dive/sports bribery) or ignoring what actually happened on the field (see a long list I just gave in the Tuohy video above.
2. He says:  "Dirty money no longer talks like it once did in team sports."  That's because it's no longer the individual athlete (an act of sports bribery which is Federal-illegal -- the research of which went into Brian Tuohy's second book, Larceny Games).  It's now the leagues taking control of the manipulations themselves (an act which does appear to be not only criminally legal, but civilly legal as well -- the Spygate case being the best example).
3. He then moves the goalposts by trying to deceive people by talking about the massive pro salaries:  "Important players, who would need to be bribed or corrupted to fix the outcome of a game, make millions of dollars each season."  This is obfuscation on two points:  First, who says it has to be a prominent player -- or a player at all?  (Again, see the long list from the Tuohy video above.)  Second, what's to say that an important player doesn't have a skeleton or two in the closet which, if revealed, would be the end of one's career?  We ended 2013 on one of the most bizarre such accusations -- that Aaron Rodgers had to answer questions on his sexual orientation after someone claimed he might be gay, a career-ender in Roger Goodell's National Homophobia League.
4. The person continues by hypothesizing the popular belief that any such player would lose all ancillary money (endorsements, etc.) by a fix.  The problem with this is, if a player is acting in a way which would fix a contest, would it not be the league (the one entity which would cover for him) to ask him to do it?  A largely-believed incident of this extent was Indianapolis vs. New Orleans in the Super Bowl.  Peyton Manning was seen to be in a very foul mood pre-game, and, after a fairly obvious pick-six in the fourth quarter of said game, it is largely believed that he was told to take a dive so the league could promote the "Comeback From Katrina" storyline -- before Bountygate basically blew that facade up.
5. And it would cost too much money?  Try to talk to some of the people behind the growing scandal of match-fixing in English soccer.  Some matches, it was believed, could be fixed by Asian magnates for as little as 50,000 pounds.  (Again, also defusing the idea that only the important players could fix a game.)
6. And then they go to the other side of the equation, realizing that no single sportsbook would be able to handle that kind of dirty cash.  He's right -- but he forgets the fact that only a very small portion of the money wagered on sporting events is legal betting  (I've heard as low as 2-3%.).  This is why I still believe the Incarcerated Bob story that swept Vegas on one of my Vegas trips about how much money Floyd Mayweather put on the Miami Heat for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals.  Much of that money had to be underground, with Mayweather's connections to people as corrupt as Incarcerated Bob.
7. He then goes on to debunk the concept of insider information -- to which I can only ask one question:  How could a handicapper make any money by consistently staking his entire season's picks (and, hence his livelihood) on certain "million-star locks" with insider information...  unless he knew the result beforehand??

The facts are clear.

Business considerations rig games.

If you wish to bet on them, you need to take that into account.

Full disclosure:  I'm usually a $5-10 bettor in Las Vegas when I go, and I'm going this weekend.