A Debate & Commentary ~ Is the NFL Fixed ?

Quote Originally Posted by cd329:

First off until people get exposed, like the basketball ref that got exposed this summer none of us will ever know how much fixing is actually taking place in all sports.

Personally i believe that sports are indeed fixed and they are fixed for one reason "MONEY"

Why people are so hard headed about not believing sports can be fixed is beyond me.  For some reason people think that the sports industry is just full of honest straight arrow people amazes me.

The truth is in all of society all over the world, when you have money and people involved in something you are always going to have corruption, thats just a part of human nature and its been that way since man has been on this planet.  To sit there in your dream world and believe that for some reason the world of sports and the people involved in it, cant be corrupt is just downright silly.  What did all the people involved in sports have their human genes taken out of them? or are they just the most honest people on this planet?  Get real people, this is a huge  industry with billions at stake.

I really love the people who say all these people make to much money to be involved in a fix because that couldnt be farther from the truth.  There is never ever enough money for anybody in the human race and no matter how much you have, you will always want more.

Now do i have proof sports are fixed, of course not?  But i believe 100 percent that certain games are for sure fixed.  Will i ever know for sure if they are? I highly doubt it, unless someday the whole sports world gets exposed as just being a big entertainment business with alot of results staged, just to keep all us lemons giving billions to the people involved.

One last thing, i truly believe that the refs, owners and league are the driving forces behind the majority of fixes.  Sure theres probably some players doing it to make a few more dollars or help their freinds make some easy cash, but for the most part its the refs who really control all games. It only takes a couple of well timed penalities for a team to go from winner to loser.  Think about it for a minute, it only takes a couple of called back tds and one team can be screwed.  And yes sometimes even with the refs help, teams can still find a way to lose.  Those are things that are uncontrollable by anybody.

Well thats my 2 cents

cd

EXCELLENT succinct summary....very well said !

 sports history is riddled with several incidents of athletes conspiring with gamblers to fix the outcomes of sporting events, or criminals acting against athletes whose on-field performance affected their wagers.

• In 1919, gamblers bribed several members of the Chicago White Sox to throw the World Series. This became known as the Black Sox Scandal and was recounted in book and movie form as "Eight Men Out".
• In 1951, Attorney Frank Hogan indicted college basketball players for point shaving from four New York schools, including CCNY, Manhattan College, New York University and Long Island University.
• In 1978, mobsters connected with the New York Lucchese crime family, among them Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke, organized a point shaving scheme with key members of the Boston College basketball team.
• On August 24, 1989, former baseball player Pete Rose voluntarily accepted a permanent ban from Major League Baseball for allegedly betting on Reds games while managing the team. Rose would later confirm the truth of the allegations in his 2004 autobiography, My Prison Without Bars.
• Andrés Escobar, a Colombian defender, was murdered shortly after his return from the 1994 FIFA World Cup, where he scored an own-goal, the first of a 2-1 defeat to the USA that knocked out the Colombians at the first phase. In the most believed explanation, the Medellín drug cartel bet large sums of money that Colombia would advance, and blamed the Medellín-born Escobar for the loss.^[2]
• In 1994, a comprehensive point shaving scheme organized by campus bookmaker Benny Silman and involving players from the Arizona State University men's basketball team was uncovered with the assistance of Las Vegas bookmakers, who grew suspicious over repeated large wagers being made against Arizona State.^[3]
• On 10 February 1999, a plot to disable the floodlights of The Valley during a Charlton-Liverpool match was discovered. Three individuals were arrested, and the scam tracked to Malaysia, where the Premiership is very popular, and bets frequent.^[4]
• In early 2000, Hansie Cronje, then highly-regarded captain of the South African cricket team, rocked the cricketing world with frank admissions of match-fixing. Hansie admitted to receiving more than $140,000 USD from London-based bookies to influence aspects of his team's performance. For example, he convinced Herschelle Gibbs to score less than 20 runs in a One Day International for a $15,000 USD reward. Hansie received a lifetime ban from any involvement in professional cricket but he maintained throughout his numerous trials that he never consipired to fix overall match results. He died tragically in a plane crash in 2002, leaving behind many unanswered questions and a tainted legacy.

because i still have a 50-50 chance of winning and being on the right side.  theres not alot of types of bets you can make where you have a 50-50 chance of winning.

Oh and let me make this clear, before a game starts i have no idea if that game will be indeed a fixed game, because if i knew that i would be rich.

I think what some people need to do is not bet some games and just watch them closely the whole game to see how the refs influence alot of games and how the outcomes would probably be differnt if they werent so damn corrupt and part of the whole plot.

disclaimer: this is just my opinion on the subject.