Is The NFL Fixed?
Across social media platforms, internet forums, and elsewhere, a considerable clamor is being raised over the prospect of fixing. Some people contend that the NFL predetermines the outcome of its games. It does this, according to those people, by telling the referees to be one-sided in their officiating.
After last week's Monday Night Football, the consensus emerged that Detroit was robbed of victory by multiple and crucially timed blown calls. Green Bay’s comeback victory fueled the fire for conspiracists who are screaming louder than ever that the NFL is scripted.
The Case For Fixing
I will reconstruct the case for fixing before I respond to it. So the following section does not (necessarily) represent my opinion. The people who believe that the NFL is fixed do not form a homogenous group. A relatively modest version of this theory is that only certain games are fixed.
The NFL is interested in making money. Where money enters the picture, so does corruption. One way in which NFL serves its money-making agenda is through television. It wants to get more people to watch games to sell more commercial time and to charge networks more for the rights to broadcast football games.
Because television is so crucial, the league can get more viewers by marketing a more attractive product. The Super Bowl is the biggest money-making candidate as it possesses almost world-wide appeal for television owners.
Some recent results seem to feed into this money-pursuing narrative and these results also seem to be rather fishy. One obvious case are the Rams, who benefited from an egregiously bad non-call that cost New Orleans the Super Bowl. The referees essentially won the game for the Rams, thus sending a bigger market team (the nation’s second-biggest, in fact) to the Super Bowl over a team with a much smaller market.
Legally, there’s nothing the Saints — or any other team that’s been gravely wronged by the refs — could do. After all, the NFL is legally classified as an entertainment business — just like the WWE.
The Case Against Fixing
For every missed call that the refs make allegedly in order to achieve a predetermined outcome, one could just as well cite incompetence.
Incompetence is typically evaluated as a missed call. But it’s often difficult to determine what a missed call is when the rules themselves aren’t always clear.
Let’s take pass interference as an example. You can look at Section 5 of the NFL rulebook to follow along: 2019 NFL Rulebook | NFL Football Operations In a nutshell, pass interference is: „When any act by a player more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage significantly hinders an eligible player’s opportunity to catch the ball."
In looking at this rule, one notices that there are seven different examples of actions that constitute pass interference. There’s an additional stipulation, though, that pass interference is not limited to those seven forms. There are also some exceptions.
The line between an act that should be deemed to be pass interference and one that shouldn’t be is blurry. For example, one exception to the rule is when the the players’ legs „inadvertently“ get tangled. In other words, it’s pass interference when a cornerback sticks his leg out to trip the wide receiver, but not when both players’ legs run into each other.
It’s impossible to definitely distinguish between innocent tangling and pass interference because the rule’s marker for distinction is inadvertence. Inadvertence describes a player’s intention and intentions aren’t observable. In other words, to be absolutely positive in their decision, referees would have to read minds.
In general, the determination whether contact between players constitutes pass interference is in sundry cases almost completely subjective, with only vaguely worded guidelines that are complicated by numerous stipulations available to the referees.
With so many rules that contain so many fine points, one would think that referees get incredible training. But actually, referees are only part-time employees. Many of them are teachers or lawyers or the like in everyday life. Given their lack of training and the difficulty of their task, it’s no wonder that calls get missed.
Why Fixing Seems Considerably Less Plausible
To make a distinction between fixing and incompetence, one has to be able to mind-read the referees or somehow overhear referees being told what narrative to follow.
There’s little of substance that conspiracy theorists can point to. One evidentiary source could be NFLpenalties.com, which shows that Green Bay is the second-greatest beneficiary from referees as they rank second net penalty yards.
But these sort of stats change yearly. Last year, for example, the Packers ranked fifth-to-last in net penalty yards. It seems less likely that they're a league favorite and more likely that different teams benefit more or less each season from coin-flip calls made by referees who don’t always know very well how to apply a high number of complicated rules.
The burden of proof should belong to conspiracy theorists because it doesn’t make sense. Their biggest argument seems to be economic. But one has to ask them what would happen to the NFL financially if the league were caught.
I think it stands to reason that a rigging scandal would dramatically undermine the NFL’s financial prerogative. It would turn off viewers for the same reason why WWE isn’t more popular. It seems so easy for a scandal to be uncovered as it would only take one person to reveal the secret. It also doesn’t seem worth the hassle for the NFL, which is already an extremely profitable league that is annually guaranteed tremendous viewership.
Referees Aren’t Necessarily Off The Hook
A fair middle ground, I think, would be to wonder whether some referees are biased. They may be swayed by the home crowd or by any number of factors. Some trends support this line of thinking. The Rams, for example, are 1-8 SU when Bill Vinovich referees their games. Perhaps he harbors some subconscious antipathy towards Los Angeles.
Conclusion
Referee incompetence is going to persist because the NFL doesn’t want to do anything to repair it, even scratching plans that once existed for a full-time training program for referees. The uproar over alleged fixing, over teams getting robbed, and so on, only pushes the NFL towards the center of people’s thoughts and televisions.
Financially, referee incompetence therefore makes significantly more sense than fixing where the risk is vastly larger than the reward. Still, referees may have biases and bettors could profit by studying referee trends.
Across social media platforms, internet forums, and elsewhere, a considerable clamor is being raised over the prospect of fixing. Some people contend that the NFL predetermines the outcome of its games. It does this, according to those people, by telling the referees to be one-sided in their officiating.
After last week's Monday Night Football, the consensus emerged that Detroit was robbed of victory by multiple and crucially timed blown calls. Green Bay’s comeback victory fueled the fire for conspiracists who are screaming louder than ever that the NFL is scripted.
The Case For Fixing
I will reconstruct the case for fixing before I respond to it. So the following section does not (necessarily) represent my opinion. The people who believe that the NFL is fixed do not form a homogenous group. A relatively modest version of this theory is that only certain games are fixed.
The NFL is interested in making money. Where money enters the picture, so does corruption. One way in which NFL serves its money-making agenda is through television. It wants to get more people to watch games to sell more commercial time and to charge networks more for the rights to broadcast football games.
Because television is so crucial, the league can get more viewers by marketing a more attractive product. The Super Bowl is the biggest money-making candidate as it possesses almost world-wide appeal for television owners.
Some recent results seem to feed into this money-pursuing narrative and these results also seem to be rather fishy. One obvious case are the Rams, who benefited from an egregiously bad non-call that cost New Orleans the Super Bowl. The referees essentially won the game for the Rams, thus sending a bigger market team (the nation’s second-biggest, in fact) to the Super Bowl over a team with a much smaller market.
Legally, there’s nothing the Saints — or any other team that’s been gravely wronged by the refs — could do. After all, the NFL is legally classified as an entertainment business — just like the WWE.
The Case Against Fixing
For every missed call that the refs make allegedly in order to achieve a predetermined outcome, one could just as well cite incompetence.
Incompetence is typically evaluated as a missed call. But it’s often difficult to determine what a missed call is when the rules themselves aren’t always clear.
Let’s take pass interference as an example. You can look at Section 5 of the NFL rulebook to follow along: 2019 NFL Rulebook | NFL Football Operations In a nutshell, pass interference is: „When any act by a player more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage significantly hinders an eligible player’s opportunity to catch the ball."
In looking at this rule, one notices that there are seven different examples of actions that constitute pass interference. There’s an additional stipulation, though, that pass interference is not limited to those seven forms. There are also some exceptions.
The line between an act that should be deemed to be pass interference and one that shouldn’t be is blurry. For example, one exception to the rule is when the the players’ legs „inadvertently“ get tangled. In other words, it’s pass interference when a cornerback sticks his leg out to trip the wide receiver, but not when both players’ legs run into each other.
It’s impossible to definitely distinguish between innocent tangling and pass interference because the rule’s marker for distinction is inadvertence. Inadvertence describes a player’s intention and intentions aren’t observable. In other words, to be absolutely positive in their decision, referees would have to read minds.
In general, the determination whether contact between players constitutes pass interference is in sundry cases almost completely subjective, with only vaguely worded guidelines that are complicated by numerous stipulations available to the referees.
With so many rules that contain so many fine points, one would think that referees get incredible training. But actually, referees are only part-time employees. Many of them are teachers or lawyers or the like in everyday life. Given their lack of training and the difficulty of their task, it’s no wonder that calls get missed.
Why Fixing Seems Considerably Less Plausible
To make a distinction between fixing and incompetence, one has to be able to mind-read the referees or somehow overhear referees being told what narrative to follow.
There’s little of substance that conspiracy theorists can point to. One evidentiary source could be NFLpenalties.com, which shows that Green Bay is the second-greatest beneficiary from referees as they rank second net penalty yards.
But these sort of stats change yearly. Last year, for example, the Packers ranked fifth-to-last in net penalty yards. It seems less likely that they're a league favorite and more likely that different teams benefit more or less each season from coin-flip calls made by referees who don’t always know very well how to apply a high number of complicated rules.
The burden of proof should belong to conspiracy theorists because it doesn’t make sense. Their biggest argument seems to be economic. But one has to ask them what would happen to the NFL financially if the league were caught.
I think it stands to reason that a rigging scandal would dramatically undermine the NFL’s financial prerogative. It would turn off viewers for the same reason why WWE isn’t more popular. It seems so easy for a scandal to be uncovered as it would only take one person to reveal the secret. It also doesn’t seem worth the hassle for the NFL, which is already an extremely profitable league that is annually guaranteed tremendous viewership.
Referees Aren’t Necessarily Off The Hook
A fair middle ground, I think, would be to wonder whether some referees are biased. They may be swayed by the home crowd or by any number of factors. Some trends support this line of thinking. The Rams, for example, are 1-8 SU when Bill Vinovich referees their games. Perhaps he harbors some subconscious antipathy towards Los Angeles.
Conclusion
Referee incompetence is going to persist because the NFL doesn’t want to do anything to repair it, even scratching plans that once existed for a full-time training program for referees. The uproar over alleged fixing, over teams getting robbed, and so on, only pushes the NFL towards the center of people’s thoughts and televisions.
Financially, referee incompetence therefore makes significantly more sense than fixing where the risk is vastly larger than the reward. Still, referees may have biases and bettors could profit by studying referee trends.
