Numerous N-word racial slurs are accused of the Harrisburg team, so many, in fact, that the referees ceased hearing of the complaints of South Holland Seton.
According to the Chicago Tribune, this is the second time in a month such racist comments were being accused of being hurled by Harrisburg High students. A former black student, Roman Moore, fled the school and filed a Federal lawsuit against the Harrisburg School District (which has still not been received, apparently) for having his name put with a noose around it in the school's locker room.
With 2:05 to go in the first half of the game, Mark Weems Jr., the best player on SHS, and already on one technical foul for complaining to the officials in the half, makes contact with one of the officials, gets his second technical, and is tossed. SHS was up by 8 at the time, and lost by 6 by the end of the game.
An end of the game that should not have occurred, in my honest opinion, and nearly didn't! At halftime, the IHSA threatened an unprecedented step that, once they were notified by SHS of the racial slur allegations, they should have followed through on: They threatened to cancel the state championship game! The game, even by their standards, was completely out of control:
"(We) expressed our concerns to the schools about what had occurred in
the first half, including three technical fouls [a Harrisburg player also got a T for backtalk to the refs], a player ejection and a
bench warning [the Harrisburg bench]," IHSA executive director Marty Hickman told the Tribune.
"At that time, Seton Academy also expressed concerns over the use of
racial slurs. The onus was put on the coaches to provide the necessary
leadership to change the tenor of the game. We also made it very clear
that if things did not change, we would take the unprecedented step of
canceling the game."
SHS assistant Art Kimber said the referees failed to follow up on the directive, and the game continued to deteriorate! This statement forced the IHSA to investigate the game fully.
Finally, at the end of the game, in an act seen as unsportsmanlike (but this layman will state was probably the only way the entire building did not erupt into a riot!!), SHS head coach Brandon Thomas pulled his team from the floor after Harrisburg's victory and refused to take part in the trophy ceremony. He has, in effect, been suspended as the coach (he is technically "on leave", but let's not fool ourselves!!) while the school district and the IHSA investigate.
So I have one question the Illinois high-school basketball authorities?
WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU WAITING FOR, AN EVENING-NEWS LEVEL RIOT??
That game, at MAXIMUM, should have been called at the end of the half, especially after the allegations were on the table from the SHS team and players.
The IHSA is extremely fortunate the entire building did not disintegrate like has been seen in some playoff games in places like New York City, where the entire gym basically falls victim to a riot.
The title should lay vacant, if it can be proven that Harrisburg did utter the slurs. SHS has no claim to the title after the contact with an official on the part of Weems.
But if this is the kind of thing which "being a man" and sports are degenerating to, oh boy...
EDIT 4/3/13: A "statement" condemning the actions of the teams was made on the Illinois High School Assocation's website, but no further action is expected.
Major rumor running around that a number of players, including Ryan Braun (again!!), Alex Roid-riguez, and two other Yankees (Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson) could be suspended for steroid use.
I agree with my anonymous friend (hat tip!) who tipped me off to the rumor: A-Fraud needs to go for any number of reasons, and this should be strikes one AND two for Braun -- see you in 2014, if at all!!
But the biggest problem is the one which should've been apparent, now, for about 10 years: Can anyone hit the freaking ball with any consistency whatsoever and NOT be on the gas?
I expect this to get covered up. Seriously.
The imbalance toward the pitchers is getting dangerous to the marketers of the game. It is what baseball needs to be to have any legitimacy, but the fact of the matter is that MLB is paying for a deliberate coverup of a drug culture which was, honestly, believed necessary on their part and the part of the MLBPA to keep baseball viable post-1994 strike.
(Even if all that was proven a sham when Congress forced them to open their books, but let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story...)
And that the Yankees are centralized in these rumors makes me wonder if A-Rod might be more than just taking the gas, as it were. We know the son of a bitch has been on roids for some time and that he has some very slimy connections in New York (the underground poker illegalities, Mr. Selig??), so would it shock me if he was supplying some of the stuff to other players as well?
The more masters you have to meet on the basis of things like gambling, the closer you get to an overreaching national group that oversees both sides of that equation.
And it's that the major sports leagues and NCAA don't want.
The case will continue -- it'll be appealed.
Here's the thing the leagues refuse to answer: Even on the comparatively micro-scale that legal Nevada sportsbook gaming has, hasn't the damage that the leagues believe will happen already been feasibly done?
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.
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"
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!
(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:
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.
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?)
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?
