Can't get away from the Odell Beckham stuff even if you tried this week.
Shockingly, the NFL has chosen to uphold the one-game suspension Odell Beckham Jr. received for probably some of the cheapest shots ever done on a football field. I'll get to where I would've started the bidding later, but there is FAR FAR more to this story -- and the one on the officiating in this farce of a rigged league -- than meets the eye.
For example: Everybody's been ragging on Beckham -- and yes, he should be! -- for what he did on the field. But how many people have even remotely attempted to report this gem Deadspin picked up on: That at least two members of the Carolina Panthers defense came to Beckham in warmups, swinging a baseball bat given to him by a Panthers team official!!!
The player, according to Ian Rapoport, was Marcus Ball, on the Panthers practice squad. And, no, it does not excuse Beckham's actions during the game at all! In fact, I'd have started the suspension bidding at the two games remaining in the regular season, any games the Giants play in the playoffs, and the first four regular season games of next year.
In asking a question as to what "team official" may have given Ball the bat, another player was revealed to have threatened Beckham with the bat: Art Stapleton, a Giants beat writer, said Josh Norman had one too!
According to Jay Glazer and one injured Panther, the bat is actually used as a symbol of "bringing the wood"...
Yeah and fucking right. Where the FUCK are the seven officials in this game and NFL Security to stop this bullshit before someone (as my External Bullshit Detector put it) brings a knife or even uses a weapon in a pileup or something like that?
This Deadspin article notes the mindset Beckham had: At least THREE separate ejection-level cheapshots that might rival anything on an NFL field over the last fifteen or so years. Albert Haynesworth got five games for a singular incident, Beckham should be lucky he's sitting just the one.
That said, any Panther player or employee involved in this needs to be in the league no longer, and the seven officials for the game need to be straight-up fired. It got so bad, according to Deadspin, that even the mafioso Dean Blandino basically had enough and told one of the officials effectively: "You know, you can throw somebody out of this game!"
And that kinda gets down to it: There are really only two choices...
Either the referees are about as competent as a professional wrestling referee in the work...
OR
The referees in the NFL are engaging in criminal conspiracy with one or more parties for the benefit of one or more criminal acts.
And note that I'm not just talking about game-fixing. (Though that would be relevant, especially given the announcement that, during the playoffs, referee crews will be allowed to talk with the New York bosses on many more things than just instant replay. This is so bad that Brian Tuohy reports (Week 15 portion) that even former ref head Mike Pereira says this bombshell:
"Basically, what it looks like is that the league office is making decisions on who possibly wins or loses the game,"
To get Pereira to say this, as Tuohy asserts, is huge. As one of Tuohy's five contests on Facebook for a copy of his new book (all completed before this writing), Tuohy asked what would convince people that the games were rigged. (The winner said "The apocalypse.")
But it's more than that. It's more than even becoming part of what is injuring and killing these players. By their active ignorance or even active wanting these acts to happen in the name of the most HARDCORE GOLDEN SUPER BOWL EVAH..., these referees are endangering everyone in the building.
How many more teams are now going to see it OK to threaten the star receiver/quarterback/sack supplier/etc. with baseball bats, knives, etc. and so forth...
Somebody is going to get a weapon to them, especially if it's clear that it appears OK for the Carolina team to do what they did...
... or are you trying to tell me that Carolina IS the chosen NFC team, NFL?
No comments:
Post a Comment