PFT duscusses NFL being fixed

[PATSYLICIOUS]

Good point Patsy! It probably IS a bigger deal than spygate, but thats not saying much since spygate wasn't a big deal.

lol i wasnt talking about big deal as far as media and fans reaction. i meant big deal concerning integrity of the teams. its unfortunate spygate was so overblown and even tho i hate the colts i dont believe this needs to be overblown.

 

[BSR]

I guess the folks at Columbia and Harvard were wrong for awarding me degrees then--silly them. I get called names here all the time, but no one ever seems to discuss the substance of my posts....

What substance? All I see is biased opinion and claims of anecdotal evidence, at best.

 

[flasox27]

Billy
I agree to disagree with you fair enough. I am aware that his wife is on Fox TV. If she is responsible for the leak, then Goodell should resign as he is an embassment to the position.

 

[Oswlek]

If it can be proven that they had a deal in place for the Titans to emerge victorious before the game even started I will take this seriously.

But I really don't care if they had a gentlemen's agreement not to haggle over the final few seconds.

 

[hambone1818]

Just wanted to reply re: other fans' perception that the Patriots are the league's darling and receive calls all the time in that fashion. That is a product of the Patriots success, nothing more, nothing less. Envy breeds jealousy, which breads contempt, which creates irrational fans. Their big argument, if I've read everything right (and this is coming from multiple fans of multiple teams) stem from the Baltimore game, and to a lesser extent the Giants game (and to an even lesser extent every game the Patriots play). We've gone over the late-game calls in the Baltimore game, there's really nothing to the claim there, period. The only somewhat questionable call was the TD reception, but that was a 50-50 call and the Pats would have still had the ball with 3rd and goal from the (I believe) 1 yard line. The Giants game, they've pointed out the bogus Toomer call, as well as nothing on the Wilfork eye poke. I agree, the Toomer call was ridiculous, and the eye poke--if seen by a referee--deserved at minimum a penalty and possibly an ejection. But there was also the bogus 'excessive celebration call' on Moss which led directly to a TD, and who's to say that an official had an angle to see Wilfork's action?

Finally, I just wanted to point out that whenever I hear this crap from other fans I just list all the crap from the Pats-Indy game (two bogus PI, one bogus offensive PI, one non-call on a PI on Faulk, the 'catch' that was out of bounds, the suspect placement with 2 minutes to go in the 3rd and no measurement for a 1st down even though they shouldn't have been close). You could take all the suspect calls for the Patriots this entire season and match them up with one that Colts received in that one game. Period. End of story.

 

[godef]

not really a huge deal imo
bigger deal than spygate? probably yes
still doesnt make it a big deal

Tell that to the Browns.

 

[patchick]

This probably is nothing -- which is to say, it probably didn't happen.

But IF it really did happen, it's huge. Two teams in the same division conspiring to ensure the outcome of a game, putting one of those teams in the playoffs while a third team from another division goes home...absolutely huge. Even if taking the timeout probably wouldn't have made a difference, you can't collude to turn that probability into a certainty.

Think about the quid pro quo potential with these two teams meeting one another twice a year. Maybe next season it's late in the year, Tennessee has already been eliminated, and Indy needs a win to secure a bye. "Well heck, Tony, you helped me out last year so I'll lend you a hand this time around." Or maybe it's just a standing agreement, so no smoking-gun conversations have to take place. Harmless "gentlemen's agreement"? I don't think so.

Again, I doubt there actually was any agreement in place. But I'll bet that the Cleveland Browns are placing a lot of calls to the league office to ask them to make absolutely sure.

 

[jcdavey]

i don't think there was an agreement in place before the game

i just think there at the end someone told tennessee that indy wouldn't call that final TO

and i think that someone was on indy's team

that's huge and pretty much is predetermining the ending of an nfl football game, which makes it fixed.

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

This probably is nothing -- which is to say, it probably didn't happen.


Again, I doubt there actually was any agreement in place. But I'll bet that the Cleveland Browns are placing a lot of calls to the league office to ask them to make absolutely sure.

Maybe nothing overt, but I think that there was a tacit understanding (at the end)-that the Colts were NOT going to go all out to win the game and that explains not calling the timeout at the end. It was sort of a 'wink and a nod' among members of the (what one poster here call appropriately ) 'the shadow government' of the NFL, the competition committee. Isn't it time to rotate membership on that committee to avoid the 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely' mentality among certain members?
Is it overblown? It depends on your perspective. If you're a Browns fan or a non-partisan fan, you expect teams to put their best efforts out there to win but understand when teams rest starters for the playoffs (greater good). What is not understandable is when a team doesn't utilize timeouts to essentially give up a game when thst game hs ramifications wrt the playoffs....
It just smells bad......

 

[BSR]

Actually, dude, in another thread (the one on Goodell and Kraft (the man who helped select him) being friends) in my first alter ego I linked to several randomly selected team's websites (Rams, Chiefs and Jags--pre- matchup) and found threads discussing how you guys were the darlings of the League and the refs to support my contention that there is such a view among the League's other fans (not necessarily to prove that there's any truth to such a view). For reasons unknown to me and never made clear (especially since I hadn't called anyone names or shown any other disrespect other than putting forth unpopular views), I was banned and those posts were deleted by one of your mods, as were several others laying out a large number of your games in which questionable calls figured into Pats' wins over the last several years. Talk to smesshy if you'd like to see them--I suspect you won't, since like most people here I suspect you'd like to be able to continue to play the victim of the NFL, which has most of the rest of the NFL's fans "ROFLMAO"......

I read them, and they are what I was referring to. Your random straw polls are not substance, no matter how many times you try to claim they are. It isn't unusual that there are topics about the Patriots on every NFL message board out there. They are the hottest team in the league and are drawing incredible numbers of viewers for their games. Of course, people are talking about them and of course some of those people are going to hate them. It doesn't mean anything.

Personally, I don't think the Patriots receive special attention from the league or refs. I also don't think the Colts receive preferrential treatment either (although that last game was very poorly officiated). Most of it can be chalked up to personal bias and perception and the media's agenda to push the "hot" story. Nothing more. If there are fans talking about how the officials favor the Pats, I would likely guess that these are probably some of the people to least likely even know or understand the rules.

 

[BSR]

Actually, dude, in another thread (the one on Goodell and Kraft (the man who helped select him) being friends) in my first alter ego I linked to several randomly selected team's websites (Rams, Chiefs and Jags--pre- matchup) and found threads discussing how you guys were the darlings of the League and the refs to support my contention that there is such a view among the League's other fans (not necessarily to prove that there's any truth to such a view). For reasons unknown to me and never made clear (especially since I hadn't called anyone names or shown any other disrespect other than putting forth unpopular views), I was banned and those posts were deleted by one of your mods, as were several others laying out a large number of your games in which questionable calls figured into Pats' wins over the last several years. Talk to smesshy if you'd like to see them--I suspect you won't, since like most people here I suspect you'd like to be able to continue to play the victim of the NFL, which has most of the rest of the NFL's fans "ROFLMAO"......

I read them, and they are what I was referring to. Your random straw polls are not substance, no matter how many times you try to claim they are. It isn't unusual that there are topics about the Patriots on every NFL message board out there. They are the hottest team in the league and are drawing incredible numbers of viewers for their games. Of course, people are talking about them and of course some of those people are going to hate them. It doesn't mean anything.

Personally, I don't think the Patriots receive special attention from the league or refs. I also don't think the Colts receive preferrential treatment either (although that last game was very poorly officiated). Most of it can be chalked up to personal bias and perception and the media's agenda to push the "hot" story. Nothing more. If there are fans talking about how the officials favor the Pats, I would likely guess that these are probably the people to least likely even know or understand the rules.

 

[the shadow]

T Dungy**........Indy Colts***

 

[Tommysgirl]

If you read clearly, I'm not saying that they are proof of the alleged cheating or officials' bias and the links I provided were not "straw polls"--what they were were links to threads where random teams' fans were discussing how in their view that the Pats are favorites of the refs and the League--ie., the point I'm making is that is the perception of a large number of fans around the League. Why do they have that perception is open to interpretation--are they just "haters", jealous of your team? Some probably are. Are they just saying what they think based on the evidence before them and what they've seen. Others fall into that camp I'm sure as well (I'd like to think I'm in this group since I must admit that in my view there is something amiss in the officiating in a statistically large number of your close games over the years, especially late in the game). Impugning your fellow board member fans' knowledge of the game doesn't make sense--where does that put you to judge, for ex., since you're really no different from them? What I've found is that many (but clearly not all) fans who take the time to register on a board and follow it and their team are fairly more knowledgeable about the game than the average fan.

I started to point all of this out for the simple reason that by reading this board you'd think that the Pats have been the victim of some kind of massive ripoff job by the officials and/or League, instead of being viewed (again rightly or wrongly) as the perpetrator of the crime. Who's right? The obviously self-interested fans of one team or a fairly large subset of the fans of all the other teams? No one knows for sure, but I can tell you where my suspicions lie......

PS Not sure how you could have read my other posts, or gone back to look at them since they are no gone and were only up for a short while at the time. That Schmessy worked quickly to quash any dissent here in Pats'Land.

Please, enlighten us. And if you say the tuck rule, you know nothing about football and will be discredited right away.

 

[RhodyPatriot]

Anybody who ever thought the NFL was the Boy Scouts needs to get a head-fix before they lose all their money making poor financial decisions.

There is collusion every time one coach sees the other coach pull starters and follows suit. It's unspoken, but it's human nature, and it's all done to benefit one's own team. Take that away and it's the Boy Scouts.

This is not a big story, just like "Spygate" wasn't. Somebody is inflating into something bigger than what it is. It's a nothing story.

We're just loving the hypocrisy of it all.
Especially from St. Tony!

 

[Oswlek]

Please, enlighten us. And if you say the tuck rule, you know nothing about football and will be discredited right away.

My favorite is when they talk about all the holds that went uncalled in the 2003 AFCCG and then turn around and say the Baltimore game this year.

Newsflash! Baltimore got away with literally about 10X the amount of contact as NE did. But somehow the refs favored NE in both games? I really don't get it.

 

[Tommysgirl]

My favorite is when they talk about all the holds that went uncalled in the 2003 AFCCG and then turn around and say the Baltimore game this year.

Newsflash! Baltimore got away with literally about 10X the amount of contact as NE did. But somehow the refs favored NE in both games? I really don't get it.

Me neither. I think it's blind jealousy, I don't know. We've been the recipient of awful calls, I know that.

PS..I lurk on the Planet sometimes and saw that you're wife is pregnant. Congrats.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

I did, but Schmessy deleted them--from memory here goes:
All of these came late in the game, BTW (which is when you'd expect fishy calls if the fix were in, after all, why blow your cover if you don't need to).

Whoa! You are the icon for a sickly obsessed fan.
Obviously the success of the best managed, best coached, best players in the NFL really disturbs your sense of what's right in the universe. Sad.

 

[Oswlek]

I did, but Schmessy deleted them--from memory here goes:

1. Oakland (we can have differing views on the Tuck rule);

2. The Colts championship game--I had that one TIVO-ed and watched in disbelief over and over again as Marcus Pollard's shoulders jerked back due to Pats clearly holding him on back to back plays right in front of an official. Disgraceful officiating at its finest--on this one, the only folks I've ever met who think otherwise are Pats' homers;

3. The first Bills game in 2006 when we (I'm a Bills fan in the interest of full disclosure--[INSERT BILLS JOKE HERE]) were called on a bunch of BS calls late in the game and your guys got away with holding on about every other play and, my personal favorite (and believe it or not it wasn't the "convenient inadvertent whistle" when Clements took Tommy Boy's pass to the house, wiping out a Bills TD), which I also played over and over on TIVO was when one of your D-lineman clearly jumped offsides and was three feet offsides as the ball was snapped and no flag. The next play was a sack and safety that turned out to be the difference. What I found interesting on that one is that it's the EASIEST PENALTY IN THE WORLD TO CALL WHEN IT'S AS CLEAR AS IT WAS THAT GAME. Here's what TMQ said about that game in his column:

Adventures in Officiating: After the multiple zebra miscues of the playoffs, we have a new officiating uniform, but do we have new results? The offensive pass interference call against Tim Carter of the Giants with four minutes remaining Sunday, negating a first down and leading to the game-deciding interception on the next snap, looked bogus -- and I speak as someone who believes offensive pass interference should be called more often. The Patriots were flagged for just one 5-yard infraction, although there were at least four plays on which a Patriots offensive lineman wrapped both arms around a Buffalo pass-rusher, and the Flying Elvii benefited from an extremely convenient inadvertent whistle that ended a play when a Buffalo runner had 50 yards of green grass between him and the end zone.

Meanwhile, the Bills were hit with seven penalties, including a ticky-tack nudge-in-the-back call that wiped out a fourth-quarter first down in New England territory and changed a scoring opportunity into a punt....:

4. The OT win in Houston a couple of years ago when Brady was picked with about 1:30 left and no timeouts, NE down a TD. Game over, right? All of a sudden, late and out of nowhere, comes a flag way the heck up the field that was never understood by the announcers, who were speechless. Needless to say, NE gets the ball back and scores and wins in OT.

5. The Bills game in the late 90s when Wade Phillips was so mad he pulled his team off the field (and got fined for it) after a series of bizarre bad calls, including a ticky-tack PI in the endzone for a jump ball on the last play of the game (this coming after a series of other bad calls, including calling a catch in bounds that clearly wasn't as shown by replay (no official replay back then)). On that same non-catch, Andre Reed said he heard one official tell the other "Just Give It (the first down) to Them" and proceeded to also mark the ball about a yard and half beyond where the guy went out of bounds thereby converting on 4th down instead of coming up just short as he would have had the out of bounds receiver been spotted properly. Reed reported that to the media and was also fined. Ask a Bills fan sometime about the "Just Give It to Them" game and he'll know exactly what you're talking about.

There's 5 off the top of my head that don't include (a) the Miami snow plow incident, (b) the Ravens game this year or (c) the other Bills game from a few years ago when the officials came up with some garbage rule about touching the ball when out of bounds that no one had ever heard before or since. Ask around the League, it sounds like everyone's got their favorite "remember that time that New England and the refs screwed us" story.

All of these came late in the game, BTW (which is when you'd expect fishy calls if the fix were in, after all, why blow your cover if you don't need to).

1) Your view also differs with the NFL rule book. So be it. I contend that the Bills should only be awarded 4 points for a touchdown, but I don't think the NFL is changing that one either.

2) You may not be aware - based on your tone I don't think so - but Indy got away with three seperate "stretch the jersey out behind the defender" holds and had three seperate times where they were give to a "3 Mississippi" count beyond 00 on the playclock. On the Pollard hold, the reason Phifer grabbed his left wrist was because Marcus was using said wrist to push off.

3) There was no "inadvertant whistle" wiping out a int return. There was a penalty on the defense. I suppose that the play could have been allowed to continue in the hopes of offsetting penalties causing a replay of the down, but that is all. I don't recall the others clearly enough to respond.

4) That penalty was proven to have happened prior to the replay angles. The announcers were just as incredulous as you until the finally showed a replay from an entirely different camera and the hold happened long before the other angle seemed to indicate. Try again.

5) That was bad, but that was the Bledsoe/Carroll Pats. Do you really think the conspiracy runs that far back?

The snow plow game?! Jeezus man, that is way, way back.

And I already discussed the Ravens game where they got away with (literally) about 75 defensive holding and PI penalties. You seem to be all hot and bothered by the 5-10 that NE got away with in the 2003 AFCCG, I would think that the 75-100 that Baltimore got away with would lead you to writing your congressman.

For the record, other than the Minny game last year and (possibly) the SD game last year, EVERY SINGLE NE GAME HAS BEEN REFFED EITHER NEUTRALLY OR AGAINST NE SINCE THE 2003 AFCCG.

 

[Oswlek]

Me neither. I think it's blind jealousy, I don't know. We've been the recipient of awful calls, I know that.

PS..I lurk on the Planet sometimes and saw that you're wife is pregnant. Congrats.

Thank you.

 

[DaBruinz]

I guess the folks at Columbia and Harvard were wrong for awarding me degrees then--silly them. I get called names here all the time, but no one ever seems to discuss the substance of my posts....

Maybe if there was actually some substance to your posts, there would be something to discuss. As for your degrees... I can say I have degrees from Columbia and Harvard as well. Doesn't mean its fact.

Trolls tend to say anything.