So I just posted Brian Tuohy's Top 10
most-fixed single sporting events.
I'd been meaning to get on a list of my
own, which will differ quite a bit from the one you may have just
read of Brian's.
I can't really name baseball games on
at least my part of the list, for one very simple reason: Most of
the important situations of that regard are far more than just one
game (Jeter's obvious situation aside, more for the fact that a lot
of this stuff is far more important in the eyes of American lexicon,
if not the world's – see #1!).
I had to be careful and disqualify at
least one I had put on this list, which would probably more fit on
the “season or series” list I will do later. (South Korea in the
2002 World Cup)
#10: Favre's Last Hurrah, And He
Probably Remembers None Of It: 2010 NFC Championship Game, January
24, 2010.
For many, many years, I really felt
that Brett Favre himself rigged the Katrina Saints to the Super Bowl
with a blatant interception no one else could believe.
Brett Favre was jacked up, mauled, and
it was basically his last meaningful game in the NFL, because the
Katrina Bountygate Saints were allowed to do anything short of
killing the guy to get the Saints to the Super Bowl – and most
people understand Favre was never the same again.
I know the announcer for the Vikings
couldn't believe it. I wonder if he actually saw, in as condensed
form as I found it, how many headshots and other illegal shots the
guy took. I'd be shocked if Favre could count to ten by the time he
throws that fateful fourth-quarter pick!
The importance of this is the marriage
between lethal football and victory. On top of it, it also
demonstrates what most of Football Nation America sees as the sport
of football, and why they object to every measure taken to (falsely)
make the game safer.
#9: The Offensive Foul/Jordan Says
Goodbye – Game 6, 1998 NBA Finals, June 14, 1998.
I still remember where I was that
night. I was in Cell 5 of Lower 3 in Riker's Island, arrested three
weeks previous for wanting to maul Debbie Gibson. (Let's not mince
words about it – that was what was believed – and, in many ways,
the standard such law requires, and only the belief (my belief be
damned and declared irrelevant) was necessary.)
I didn't get the full ramification of
how blatant this final “Fuck You” to all fairness in the name of
His Airness was until I saw the blatant forearm shiver to the
defensive player's ass for myself a couple of years later.
But what did a triviality like an
offensive foul matter? The league, in many people's eyes, was about
to die, in the “Bittersweet Symphony” (and I got that from
Sporting News Radio playing that song over the end of the Bulls'
rigged dynasty) of the end of the Foolish and Wretched Ballhog Era.
So one more for the Jordan, #6 on the
way out. And the Suicide Prevention Advocate on our wing ran up and
down the hall of cells, pounding on each one in celebration of the
final Jordan title.
PS: There was no malice in doing so.
It was celebration in and of itself only.
#8 The Tuck Rule Game: AFC Divisional
Round: January 19, 2002.
It'd be higher, except this is, more,
the nascent beginnings of what the NFL would be doing to teams in the
two decades since. At this point, I was, as I said, still
thinking.... “OK, they're fucking Al Davis again, so be it.” It
wasn't until one far further up the list that I began to see the
connections.
So, really, I view this similar to what
Brian Tuohy put as his #1 fix (the Katrina Game – first MNF back in
the Superdome): A set-up for more down the road...
#7 Mayweather-.... McGregor! August
26, 2017.
I could've easily gone with the same
fight that Brian talked about, but decided, instead, to do this
Mayweather farce. It not only serves as a microcosm of the fraud
which is Floyd Mayweather (and, by extension, most of boxing!), but
this scripted fight (arranged, first, to make people think McGregor
could hang with the guy for a few rounds – then Money Team gets
it's 50-0....) is an example why the Nevada State Athletic Commission
could go fuck itself about seven ways from Tuesday.
#6 Slight break of the rule, but it'll
make sense: Packers-Seahawks: Fail Mary (September 24, 2012) AND
the 2015 NFC Championship Game (January 18, 2015)
I'm grouping these two together for one
simple reason: One started the “Legion of Boom” Era, the other
was it's final hurrah.
The Fail Mary was the final night of
the 2012 referee's lockout, where replacement officials had made such
a meal of the entire NFL season that one had to wonder if the league
actually was playing with their rigged cards face-up on the table.
Ironically, ask Bill Belichick, who all but attacked a replacement
ref the night before the Fail Mary.
But the league needed a new
dynasty/mindset/etc. Fans who would do ANYTHING for a championship.
Players who would do ANYTHING for a championship. A league that
would do ANYTHING to allow for it, because of what America really
wants out of their football.
I still recall, even knowing the score
was 19-7 in favor of the Packers in 2015, KNOWING the script was in
for the Seahawks to win. And I saw them basically commit several
acts which made them co-participants.
The Green Bay Packers have not played
another relevant NFL game since, and it's probably going to be quite
a few years – if EVER – before they do so again.
But The Fail Mary Game started the
Legion of Boom Era, and the NFC title game 2 1/2 years later ended
it.
#5 Super Bowl XXXVI
Previously addressed in it's place on
Brian's list.
#4 Game 6 2002 Western Conference
Finals
Again, Previously addressed in it's
place on Brian's list.
#3 Super Bowl III
And, the third time, and for the same
reason I said in it's place on Brian's list.
#2 Slight break of the rule: The
National Religion Deifies Brady and Belichick: Super Bowls LI(E) and
LIII(E)
The comeback and the inexplicable
“pitchers' duel” two years later (and you could also make the
case of Philly winning the Super Bowl in the interim as well!!) took
Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and separated them from anything
football had to offer and placed them on a plane only the likes of
the 60's Celtics and a foolish and wretched one-dimensional ballhog
seem to inhabit.
That's the thing: Whatever Super Bowl
XXXVI started, these two “victories” for the Patriots solidified
in crystal the deification of the likes of Brady and Belichick. Both
on a sports and political/propaganda level, it now said that Patriots
were not only champions, but some degree of gods, at least for those
who bought into it.
And it's not hard to buy into it when
the NFL Network is showing ads promoting Patriots Championship Gear
for the Super Bowl –
two
days-plus before the game ever took place....
#1 1-7 – 2014 World Cup Semifinal,
July 8, 2014.
I remember where I was for this one too. I was in an
upscale sports bar in my hometown to watch the World Cup Semifinal
between Germany and the home side of Brazil.
Within two hours, I was convinced that
I had just witnessed the biggest rigged sporting event in the history
of the world. It's one thing to talk about Super Bowls and their
impact here.
It's another when you talk about the
one worldwide event which can supplant it.
So explain to me, in a World Cup Brazil
literally waited decades to host as it's birthright to the game, how
Germany could make the home side literally look like Saudi Arabia or
a similar outclassed opponent.
Watch any number of the goals (but
especially an unheard of four goals in six minutes), and tell me
these weren't just given over by a Brazilian side who was throwing
the match...
Understand that, if you watched the
game, it was clear Germany knew the match was fixed: A Germany which
would've decided to play fully would've scored somewhere in the
element of twelve to fifteen goals that afternoon!
Part of it was the open space Brazil
allowed Germany, especially in that barrage that left the halftime
score at what was historic enough at 5-0, but could well have doubled
that number.
Part of it was that Germany, realizing
what was probably going on, had to take on the mantle of keeping up
appearances for the match to prevent such an alarming and telling
result.
And then part of it was revealed some
days later on
Deadspin.
As
covered in this blog, an online bettor not only correctly bet on
the result of the match (7-1 Germany), but felt lightly-regarded
German Sami Khedira would score in the match (Khedira scored the
fifth German goal – the fourth of that six-minute four-goal
onslaught.)
Khedira has scored 7 goals in, now, 77
caps for the German side.
That Brazil would lose by this
catastrophe on Brazilian soil in the World Cup semifinals is big
enough. But it does raise the question: If the game were
legitimate, would it not have exposed all four other Brazilian
matches to that degree of farce, since the team was actually not of
caliber much above the likes of the minnows of the World Cup.
My guess: Asian money, and shittons of
it. Why? Consider the over 2,300 to 1 odds on the bet I just gave
above.
