My Top 10 Fixed Games

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.

Watch this video, and then call me an idiot...

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.