I don't believe the federal government is hiding information about UFOs landing in New Mexico; I don't have an underground compound in my back yard stocked with canned goods and ammo; I don't believe American auto manufacturers intentionally build cars to break down so the people who buy them will have to buy them more often. I've been a rabid NFL (and NCAA football for that matter) fan since I was seven years old. For a few years now I've been increasingly dismayed by the regularity of blatantly, inexcusably bad calls in the NFL; but I've done my best to take Steve Section 102's approach (forgive me if I got the user name wrong) and do my best to believe that the league isn't corrupt, because I didn't like the alternative. But after the game last Sunday, I'm done.
A brief greatest hits of calls just in the past five years that cannot be rationalized away to incompetence, and which undeniably altered the outcome of games:
2007 Super Bowl - first half: Plaxico Burress catches a bomb from Eli that puts the Giants in field goal range. They kick a field goal, which ends up being the difference in the game. At the time of the catch, not later but when it happened, the TV broadcast showed a slo-mo replay of the catch, and Burress pushed off as egregiously as has ever been done - he extended both his arms and pushed the Patriots defender five yards away; and, inexplicably, it wasn't called. There's no doubt that at least one of the officials saw it; but they chose not to call it, and it wasn't borderline, or even close. And it made the difference in the game.
2007 Super Bowl - second half: The Patriots had a third-and-long. Brady dropped back to pass, and after he had thrown the ball incomplete, one of the Giants DLs slammed into him - helmet to helmet. Never at any time is any player on the defense allowed to hit a QB in the head, with any part of his body, much less the helmet; yet the Giant defender not only did it, he led with his helmet right into Brady's chin. The TV broadcast showed it in slow-motion replay - and the announcer's response was enough to spell out the corruption in this league for anyone who's not in denial and has his eyes open, because neither of them said a word - didn't comment in any way - pretended it hadn't happened. If the penalty had been rightly called, it would have put the Patriots in Giants territory with a first down; as it was, they had to punt. That one dishonest call made a tremendous difference in the game.
2007 Super Bowl - the last seventy seconds of the game: This was on Youtube for a while, may still be. The clock "somehow" stopped working properly, coincidentally just as the Giants were running out of time on their eventual game-winning drive; and, unlike the many thousands of times when a game clock has stopped working and the officials have corrected it by adding or removing time, nothing was done. You can hear Troy Aikman - not exactly a conspiracy theorist - commenting repeatedly to the whole world on the fact the clock is not working properly, and that time is not elapsing off said clock as it should. If the clock had worked properly, the Giants would have run out of time; as it was, a drive that would have taken up two minutes or more, took about twenty seconds. If you happened not to be watching the clock at the time, go back and watch it, and try to come up with some explanation of how that's not corrupt.
The regular-season Baltimore game this year: A field goal that to anyone with eyes clearly passed outside any portion of the uprights, by several feet, was called good, and then not reviewed. And it was set up by a pass interference call.
AFC Championship game 2013: As another poster noted, the Ravens DBs were bending (as in shattering) the rules the entire game, and were not called for it. This alone easily could have made the difference in the game, without the other corrupt calls. When you have one of the two or three most prolific offenses in the history of the league, and it's predicated largely on the passing game, and the defense of the other team is allowed to do whatever they want rather than being held to the rules that your team is held to on defense, that is a tremendous inequality, and when you're talking about two teams at the highest level of their sport and one team is not held to the rules and the other is, it's simply not very intelligent to suggest that that won't make the difference in the game. No team could overcome that. The Ravens DBs were practically tackling our receivers long before the ball ever got there - and it wasn't called.
The Ravens OL were holding, tackling, etc. against the Patriots DL all game, and weren't called for it once. Here again, even if every other call had been honest (and they weren't by a long shot - see above), this would have made the difference in the game, just as it did for the Saints when they won the Super Bowl.
The Ridley fumble was the single most blatant, shameless instance of mass-witnessed corruption in the history of televised sports. Nearly his entire calf was on the ground before the ball came loose, and his butt slamming against the ground was what brought the ball down against his leg to dislodge it. The fact that the play was reviewed and then confirmed, makes the corruption even more despicable. The NFL was basically saying to the however many tens of millions of fans watching that they don't care if we know they're corrupt because they think we're stupid enough that we'll keep watching no matter what they do. The Patriots were down by one score at the time, and they were driving; the Ravens got the ball in Patriots territory and scored the TD that put it out of reach. That one play changed the entire course of the game.
I was worried all week leading up to the game that it was fixed because the hype about Baltimore was twenty times what it was for the Patriots. Every time I turned on sports talk radio or ESPN, all the talk was about the potential for a "Harbaugh Bowl," or what a storybook year the Ravens were having in Ray Lewis's final season, or how the Ravens felt they were a team of destiny; nothing at all was said about the possibility of redemption for the Patriots if they made it back to the Super Bowl, or what it would mean for Brady to get that fourth ring and equal Montana, etc. It was all Ravens, Ravens, Ravens.
It's not just the NFL, of course. I used to be a fan of the NBA, but finally had to walk away. It's become standard practice in the playoffs for the chosen team to get away with murder on the defensive end of the court, while the other team (the Mavericks, for instance, the year the Heat won with Shaq, when the Mavericks would be called for a foul on D-Wade when no Dallas player was within three feet of him) gets phantom fouls constantly such that the winners end up shooting two or more times (sometimes three, see Celtics-Lakers in 2008) the number of free throws even though they're the more "physical" team, etc. After the last game he ever coached, Phil Jackson, not exactly a conspiracy theorist or one to call out refs, made a point of commenting that the officiating was skewed. Just as Derrick Rose, easily the most soft-spoken and modest superstar in the league, commented on the officiating after the Bulls were put out of the playoffs last year.
People ignore it because they don't want to give up watching the sport. They don't want a hole in their lives where there was once something that gave them great pleasure. I don't want that hole any more than the next guy; I love sports. But there comes a point at which watching a sham makes the spectator a little less honest, a little less of a human being, because he's participating, whether or not through the filter of denial, in a lie.
Just for perspective, the FBI has investigated the NFL more than once in years past for fixing games:
More evidence of NFL game fixing
It can change. But it won't until enough intelligent people say, "enough," and walk away until something is done.
