Blatant favoritism for a corrupt outcome . . . no more [purchasing] official NFL items for this family . . . the NFL should feel ashamed to have offered this sham to the nation and the world. Hope all the kickbacks and bribes were worth it, I’m done with you forever.
Ask any pro football expert or diehard fan to select the most significant games in the history of the sport, and two contests will be mentioned again and again:
The Colts-Giants clash from December 28, 1958, is routinely cited as “the greatest game ever played,” because it is widely considered to mark the birth of the modern, TV-friendly NFL. The nationally televised contest (except for a blackout in New York), featuring a total of 12 players and three coaches who would be inducted into the Hall of Fame, was an exciting and dramatic tug of war, with a half-dozen momentum-swinging turnovers, numerous clutch offensive plays, some great defensive stops, and a lastminute, game-tying drive that set up the first overtime in NFL championship history.
As the cliche goes, you couldn’t have scripted a better game.
As the conspiracy theorist says: maybe that’s exactly what happened.
Super Bowl III wasn’t the most exciting or well-played game of the 1960s, but it’s part of NFL lore as one of the monumental upsets in all of sports history—a victory that catapulted the rag-tag, beleaguered American Football League from something of a joke to near-equal status with the establishment NFL.
These two landmark games are forever linked because they changed the face of pro football forever. If the 1958 game established the NFL as a TV sport to be reckoned with, the 1969 game marked the true birth of the Super Bowl as the country’s single biggest sporting event and football as the new national pastime.
Oh, and the games have one other thing in common.
They both were rigged.
Walk into any sports bar in any city in the United States on a football Sunday, wait for a call to go against the home team, and you’re bound to hear it from some beefy guy in a modified mullet haircut, a genuine replica jersey barely containing his ballooning gut, and a giant basket of buffalo chicken wings in front of him.
”How can you make that $!%!& call, ref!!! Ah, this $&@! game is so #&!*! fixed it’s a $#!&! joke!”
And then he’ll order his 14th beer—a light beer, of course, because he’s watching his weight.
If you ask that knowledgeable fan (who hasn’t played the game since he was in fourth grade and doesn’t know a single person who works for the NFL or for any of the television networks covering the NFL) for proof the game is fixed, he’s likely to throw a half-eaten buffalo wing at you or shake his head at your naivete. If you don’t understand how things work, he can’t help you.
But come on, everybody knows the games are fixed.
Everybody knows “they” can get to the refs or to a couple of key players who will throw a game for the right amount of money.
Everybody knows the television networks and the NBA conspire to favor the major-market, glamorous teams, such as the Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks and the Miami Heat.
Everybody knows the NFL takes care of certain favored players and teams.
Everybody knows the NBA draft lottery is a joke.
It’s all fixed!
Let’s take a look at the conspiracies swirling around those two landmark NFL games.
I’ve never heard anyone make the claim that the winning team of the 1958 NFL Championship Game was predetermined—but there are many who believe the final score was tainted.
The Baltimore Colts were favored by anywhere from 3½ to 5½points over the New York Giants. According to the legend, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom, a colorful character and notorious high-stakes gambler, wagered a cool $1 million—worth about $7 million in 2007 dollars—on his team to cover the spread. (According to some versions of the story, Rosenbloom had a partner with whom he split the bet 50/50.)
At the end of regulation, the score was tied at 17—the first time in league history a championship game had been knotted up after four quarters. The concept of sudden death overtime was so foreign, even the players weren’t sure what would happen next.
Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas, on NFL.com: “When the game ended in a tie, we were standing on the sidelines, waiting to see what came next. All of a sudden, the officials came over and said, ‘Send the captain out. We’re going to flip the coin to see who will receive.’ That was the first we heard of the overtime period.”
The Giants won the toss and took the ball, but they went three plays and out and had to punt.
Unitas and the Colts took over on their own 20-yard-line and proceeded to march down the field. When the Colts reached the 8-yard-line, they were in chip-shot field goal range—yet Unitas threw a supposedly dangerous pass to tight end Jim Mutscheller, who conveniently went out of bounds on the 1-yard-line.
“All I had to do was raise up and loft the ball to Mutscheller and make a hero out of him,” Unitas told NFL.com. “But he decided to fall out of bounds at the one instead of going over the goal line. I guess it was slippery over there.”
Hmmmmm.
Surely the Colts would kick the easy field goal now, right?
But wait. Let’s not forget about that point spread. Whether Rosenbloom had the Colts giving away 3½ points or even 5½ points, a touchdown would be enough to cover the line, whereas a field goal would mean the Colts would win the game but Rosenbloom would lose the bet. (Ask any sports gambler about the agony of giving away 3½ points or more and watching “his” team settle for a chip-shot field goal instead of a touchdown, and he will have a story to tell you.) Legend has it that Rosenbloom called down to the sidelines and ordered Coach Weeb Ewbank—to this day the only man I’ve ever heard of who went by the name of “Weeb”—to eschew the field goal and go for the touchdown.
On the next play, Unitas handed off to Alan Ameche, who punched it in for the winning score. That gave the Colts a 23-17 victory—there was no need to kick the extra point—and gave Rosenbloom his million-dollar win.
Or so the story goes.
Many of the principals involved in the game and in the story— including Rosenbloom, Unitas, Ewbank, and Colts kicker Steve Myhra—are gone. Rosenbloom, who later owned the Los Angeles Rams, drowned in the ocean behind his Florida home in 1979—a death many found suspicious, given Rosenbloom’s gambling habits and his alleged associations with shady characters, not to mention that he was an accomplished swimmer.
Stories about Rosenbloom’s supposed $1 million bet and his command to Ewbank to go for the spread-beating touchdown began circulating almost immediately after the game, but nobody ever proved that the Colts owner actually ordered the coach and his players to eschew the field goal.
In Dan Moldea’s 1989 book Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football, Unitas and Ewbank denied even knowing about the point spread.
“I called all the plays,” said Unitas, a hero of the game and a man of impeccable reputation. “I was responsible for calling the pass [to Mutscheller] and for calling Ameche’s number for the winning touchdown.”
Moldea interviewed Ewbank, who said, “I was with the Colts for nine years, and I never talked to Carroll Rosenbloom or any of his friends during a ball game. I wasn’t even conscious of what the line on the game was. Carroll never told me anything like that. He never gambled around me.”
Guess it comes down to whether you want to believe the likes of Weeb Ewbank, a decent, player-friendly, straitlaced football lifer whose dedication to the game was such that his house was a veritable museum to college and professional football; and Johnny Unitas, the high-top-wearing, crew cut-sporting, preternaturally “square” quarterback—or if you’d rather put stock in unsubstantiated rumors that claim these two, among others, conspired to go for the TD rather than the field goal because they wanted their boss to win a bet. And no one ever felt enough remorse to go public?
Could it be that Ewbank and Unitas went for the touchdown because the field was torn up, making a snap-and-hold a riskierthan-normal proposition? Also, the Giants had blocked a Myhra field goal attempt in regulation, and Myhra had the second-worst field goal percentage in the league, making just 5 of 14 attempts that year. How about the fact that Ameche had fumbled only once all season? It could be argued that the handoff to Ameche was a safer play than a field goal attempt at that point.
Nobody is disputing that Rosenbloom was a high-stakes gambler. It might well be that he bet a huge sum on his team to cover the spread in the 1958 championship game—though a bet of $7 million in today’s dollars would almost certainly have to be fanned out to a dozen or more bookmakers, since no single bookie would take that kind of action. And the more bookies involved, the more likely somebody would have blown the whistle on Rosenbloom. (One way to get out of paying out on a huge loss is to drop a dime on the winning bettor. He can’t collect from you if he’s in jail.) Then again, nobody has ever proved that Rosenbloom actually contacted Ewbank about the bet, either before or during the game, or that Ewbank and Unitas conspired to go for the touchdown in order to please the team owner.
In a chapter in a crazy-ass but undeniably entertaining book titled The New Conspiracy Reader, Brian Tuohy states:
Over the years, there has been speculation about whether Super Bowls are “won,” or whether they are “awarded.” Some Super Bowls are awarded because of the stories they provide, others as rewards, but each for a reason: for instance, to Green Bay for bringing tradition back to the game; to Denver and John Elway in 1997 for their long-suffering seasons (perhaps at the League’s insistence); to St. Louis and Tennessee in 1999 for their willingness to relocate for the League; to the relocated Baltimore Ravens in 2000 for their long-time owner, Art Modell, whose commitment to the NFL reaches back to the 1960s; and ... in perhaps one of the most blatant examples of scripting an entire season, to the 2001 New England Patriots. In an immediately post-9/11 America, what more symbolic team could the NFL crown its champion than the Patriots, who were the biggest underdog in Super Bowl’s 36-year history?
Gee, I don’t know. How about the New York Giants or the New York Jets? Wouldn’t a Super Bowl champion from New York be a better story than a Super Bowl champion from New England? Are we supposed to believe that the entire 2001 season (including the opening weekend games, which took place prior to 9/11) was scripted to award the Super Bowl to a team based on its nickname?
You could take almost any Super Bowl and make the claim that the outcome was scripted in order to reward some beloved veteran player or some franchise owner for one reason or another. Every year, there are a half-dozen feel-good stories about the 15-year pro who finally wins the Super Bowl on the eve of his retirement, or the coach who maintains his focus even as his wife battles an illness, or the running back who has overcome a lifetime of smoking pot and hitting the strip clubs and has found Jesus just in time to carry the ball 23 times for 175 yards and the winning TD. And you know what? If those feel-good-story guys lost, there’d be some feelgood-story guys on the other team with equally compelling tales.
Tuohy correctly notes that Super Bowl III was a “turning point for the NFL,” giving the AFL instant cred and paving the way for huge TV deals. But he veers into fantasyland when he suggests that Joe Namath guaranteed the Jets victory because the game was fixed.
“I would suggest Joe Namath is the ‘smoking gun’ of the NFL,” writes Tuohy—and there are some women from the time who might agree with him, if Tuohy were talking about Joe’s off-field prowess. But he’s not, he’s saying, “Super Bowl III was the first— but definitely not the last—time that the NFL fixed the outcome of one of its own games.”
Tuohy then proceeds to offer absolutely no evidence that Super Bowl III or any other game was fixed, either by the players, the coaches, the referees, or the Budweiser Clydesdales. A typical example of his “evidence” is his mention of Super Bowl XXX, in which Pittsburgh’s Neil O’Donnell threw two interceptions right into the arms of Cowboys defensive back Larry Brown.
“In the following off-season, both O’Donnell and Brown signed multi-million dollar free-agent contracts with other teams, going on to careers of mediocrity,” writes Tuohy.
Uh-huh. And that proves . . . what, exactly? That O’Donnell and Brown were in on the fix for Super Bowl XXX and that the Jets (which signed O’Donnell) and the Raiders (the team that signed Brown) also were in on the conspiracy and gladly awarded lucrative contracts to these two?
After the Packers won the first two Super Bowls (which weren’t even called Super Bowls at the time) by scores of 35-10 and 33-14, respectively, there was understandable skepticism about the quality of play in the AFL.
The Colts were huge favorites to stomp the Jets in Super Bowl III. Despite an early-season injury to the great Johnny Unitas, Baltimore had gone 13-1 in the regular season, dominating opponents with the league’s second-best offense and the top-ranked defense. Some long-time observers were already calling the Colts one of the greatest teams of all time.
The New York Jets, coached by our old friend Weeb Ewbank, were 11-3 and had just squeezed past the Raiders in the AFL championship game. The Jets had a strong defense and a high-powered offense, but Namath was hardly a dominant quarterback in 1968. He had just 15 TD passes (as opposed to 17 interceptions) and had yet to become the “Broadway Joe” who would grow a Fu Manchu mustache, wear pantyhose for a TV commercial, star in movies such as C.C. and Company, and receive a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year (Male) for his work in Norwood, and no, I’m not making that up.
Namath’s famous Super Bowl “guarantee” wasn’t a staged event. Responding to a heckler at the Touchdown Club three days before the big game, the brash young Namath shot back, “We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee it.”
If the fix was in, why would Namath make such a guarantee? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to keep his mouth shut? Ah, but maybe he made the guarantee just so it wouldn’t seem so suspicious, because after all why would he make the guarantee unless there was no fix, or so he wanted you to think?
Or something like that.
Thanks to a punishing ground game and some precision passing by Namath, the Jets defeated the Colts 16-7. It wasn’t a fluke win. They were faster and stronger than the opposition, and they outplayed them from start to finish. And just like that, the AFL was no longer a joke.
Since then, a number of conspiracy theorists, including at least one participant in the game, wondered if the dramatic upset was just a little too convenient and too timely.
Writes a blogger who calls himself jesus2: “I’ll cut the crap and get to the point. Unitas’ life—and that of his family—[were] threatened. Unitas [was] in on the fix.”
He goes on to cite a play in which “Unitas makes eye contact with [a] Jets’ defender before THROWING THE BALL SQUARELY IN HIS HANDS/STOMACH FOR THE INTERCEPTION. . . .”
The Congress of the United States of America and the FBI have an investigation to do ... the people of the United States of America need to know just who it was that threatened the lives of two of the most decent men in sports history: Johnny Unitas and Earl Morrall.
Ah, so that explains it. Both quarterbacks for the Colts feared for their lives, so they threw the game.
(And let’s not forget, Carroll Rosenbloom still owned the Colts in 1968. Some say he had another $1 million bet on this game— only this time he had bet against his own team.)
So not only was Unitas in on the great point-spread caper of 1958, but he also conspired to lose Super Bowl III? And here we all thought he was one of the most respected players the game has ever known. Turns out he was more corrupt than Moe Green.
Super Bowl III conspiracy theorists love to cite the words of Colts’ defensive end Bubba Smith, who raised questions about the legitimacy of the game in a Playboy interview and in a short passage in his autobiography. Smith claimed (incorrectly) that the AFL-NFL realignment of 1970 wouldn’t have been approved if the AFL didn’t win at least one of the first four Super Bowls. He questioned Coach Don Shula’s strategy and made vague references to an unnamed Miami cab driver who supposedly told him that Rosenbloom had made a huge bet against his own team. (And we all know that when it comes to getting the most reliable, irrefutable information available, one should ignore research and inside sources and go straight to the nearest cab driver.)
Does anyone believe Don Shula would deliberately try to lose a Super Bowl so his owner could win a big bet?
The AFL-NFL merger was endorsed by owners in both leagues and approved by Congress in 1966. Even if the Colts had whipped the Jets 73-0, the Super Bowl was hardly in danger. (In fact, the next year the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs whipped the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings 23-7, giving the “inferior” league two championships out of the first four Super Bowls.)
And while there’s no disputing the fact that the Jets’ upset win turned Namath into a superstar, provided the AFL with a tremendous credibility boost, and increased fan interest in the game, the Super Bowl was already a phenomenon before the Jets spun the upset. The first three Super Bowls attracted Nielsen ratings in the mid- to high-30s and market shares of approximately 70 percent. There was absolutely no need to risk the megabright future of the NFL on some elaborate game-fixing scandal involving at least one team owner and the quarterbacks on both sides of the ball.
Besides, even if we’re to believe the completely unfounded and morally objectionable charges that the Colts’ quarterbacks deliberately lost the game, how does that account for the Jets offensive line pushing around the Colts’ defensive front, including Bubba Smith, who had a subpar game? Were they all in on the fix as well?
Bubba Smith is the only participant in Super Bowl III who ever expressed any doubts about the legitimacy of the game—and even Smith later backed away from his statements and said he didn’t believe the game was fixed.
“It couldn’t happen,” Smith said in an interview with the Associated Press in 1983. “I never said they fixed the game.”
Of course, you know what happened. “They” got to Smith, too.
Whoever “they” are.
Nearly 40 years later, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Seattle Seahawks 21-10 in Super Bowl XL. As someone who placed a wager on the Seahawks +4 points, I was less than thrilled with a number of questionable calls that went against Seattle, including an offensive interference ruling that took away a touchdown in the first half and a holding call in the fourth quarter that negated a Seattle first down at the Pittsburgh 2-yard-line when the Seahawks were down by just 4 points.
No doubt about it, the refs sucked in Super Bowl XL, especially if you were a Seattle fan. It was one of the worst cases of officiating I’ve ever seen in a major championship contest in any sport. Even Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren, usually a pretty classy guy, couldn’t resist taking a shot at the officials at a rally in Seattle the day after the game, when he said he didn’t realize his team would be playing the Steelers and the officials.
But even as I was cursing the refs and lamenting my losing bet, I never seriously considered the idea that the game was rigged.
Rabid fans of the Seahawks saw it differently. Convinced his favorite team had been robbed, a fan created the “NFL Is Fixed” Web site and invited other Seahawks fans to sign his petition.
“We . . . will no longer stand by and allow our pure game to be corrupted by blatant bias,” read the manifesto on the site. “Super Bowl XL was the culmination of the most poorly officiated playoff[s] ever. This is completely unacceptable and unfair to us fans who pay money to the NFL in merchandise and ticketing sales with the assumption that the product put on the field is by no means fixed.”
Literally tens of thousands of fans “signed” the online petition, with many adding comments that elicited two reactions from me:
I’m going to have to clean up the grammar and spelling just so we get through this together. A sampling of comments:
I will never watch another NFL game…. Goodbye NFL.
“I felt that Super Bowl XL was fixed from the beginning ... Pittsburgh [Super Bowl] merchandise [was] being sold at the stadium ... numerous bad calls were made ... the better team didn’t win, the favored team did.”
The foul play in this Super Bowl was so obvious, the NFL would be derelict to not at least conduct an investigation.
Just appoint the Steelers champs next time. It’s faster and cheaper.
Just wondering what the payout from Pittsburgh was to the refs.
That game was the biggest fix I’ve ever seen. The NFL should be embarrassed and a rematch should be played.
On and on it goes. Nobody offers even a shred of evidence that the NFL or anyone else paid the officials to favor the Steelers, nor does anyone even explain why a Pittsburgh victory would be more beneficial to the league than a Seattle win. (True, there was some sentiment for the popular Jerome Bettis to win a Super Bowl before he retired, but it could be argued that the Steelers already had four Super Bowl titles while the Seahawks had never even been in a championship game; what would be so bad about a championship in Seattle?)
What you get is a bunch of fans bitching because their team lost. Yes, there were some lousy calls, but does that mean all those Steelers fans are aware of the fix but don’t care because their team won? If you’re really a fan, wouldn’t you be outraged by a game-fixing scandal even if your side was the beneficiary? Who wants a tainted championship?
When Cal Ripken Jr. hit a dramatic home run in his last All-Star game in 2001, some said it was just a little too much of a storybook moment.
“It was a Dale Earnhardt Jr. pitch,” said Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, appearing on Don Imus’s radio show.
Fineman was referencing yet another sports conspiracy theory: that Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s win on the track where his father had died was just a little too convenient.
With the Ripken home run, the thinking was that Chan Ho Park served up a cupcake so the beloved superstar could have a home run in his last All-Star game. But as baseball broadcaster Joe Buck pointed out in an article in USA Today, “Think of what you’re accusing the other guy of. Park is the first Korean-born player in the All-Star game. He didn’t wake up and think, ‘I’ll groove a pitch to Cal Ripken Jr. to make his night.’ It’s ludicrous to think he would give that kind of cooperation.”
This is one of the problems with any sports conspiracy theory: the notion that a top athlete would sublimate his ego, his competitive fires, his legacy, and his morals, and deliberately let an opponent get the better of him. Even Pete Rose drew the line at betting against his team. As ethically bankrupt as Rose was, he couldn’t bring himself to make managerial decisions against his own team.
It was 1985. The year of “the Conspiracy Draft,” as veteran NBA reporter Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune labeled it in a 2007 article.
According to the urban legend, in the first year of the NBA lottery, the NBA wanted to make sure the New York Knicks won the right to select Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing.
At the time, eight unlabeled envelopes for the #1 pick represented the eight teams eligible for that pick. The envelopes would swirl about in a plastic globe, and Commissioner David Stern would reach in and extract one envelope at a time. Rumor has it that the Knicks’ envelope had been stuck in a freezer overnight so that Stern could identify it by touch. Conspiracy theorists say that if you watch the video, you can see Stern hesitate for just a moment before he selects the first envelope—proof of, well, um, something.
To test the “Frozen Envelope” theory, I placed an envelope in my freezer overnight and then had an accomplice put it in a salad bowl with seven “unfrozen” envelopes as I looked the other way. Sure enough, it was easy to identify the frozen envelope. But just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it happened. Nor is there any evidence to back up the claims that the NBA lottery was rigged in 1993 so Orlando could get Penny Hardaway, rigged again in 1999 so the Chicago Bulls could get the #1 selection, and rigged yet again in 2001 so Michael Jordan’s Washington Wizards could get the top pick.
(Not that having the #1 pick guarantees you’re getting the best player anyway. Jordan and the Wizards selected Kwame Brown in 2001, while Gilbert Arenas fell all the way to the second round, becoming the 31st overall selection. Brown has career averages of about eight points and six rebounds per game. Arenas is one of the top scorers in the NBA.)
More than any other league, the NBA has been dogged by rumors about rigged drafts, fixed games, tainted All-Star balloting, you name it. If you were to believe all the conspiracy theories, the league is more corrupt than the Corleone family’s “olive oil” business.
Among the theories:
And you know why Michael Jordan retired the first time, right? He was getting into too much trouble with his gambling, so the league secretly suspended him and told him to say he was retiring, with the understanding that he would come back after a year or so.
Even some NBA players have openly questioned whether refs have made calls to ensure that playoff series go six or seven games. It’s the last refuge of the whining loser.
The conspiracy theorists never address the most glaring flaw in all these game-fixing scenarios: the risk/reward factor.
Even if the NFL wanted to influence the outcomes of some games, why would “they” risk hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, not to mention the credibility of the league and serious jail time, over one game?
It’s no different in the NBA, which has been shadowed by rumors of game-fixing and draft-day shenanigans for decades. Are we really to believe that the league and officials conspire to favor certain teams such as the Lakers and the Knicks and the Bulls just because the ratings for those big-market teams will be somewhat higher? Then why do the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs keep winning championships?
The NBA has a six-year, $2.2 billion deal with TNT that runs from the 2002/2003 season until 2007/2008. It also has a six-year, $2.4 billion deal with ESPN/ABC. Would it make sense for the league to risk nearly five billion dollars in TV revenue just to extend a few playoff series and make a few million more in gate receipts and TV spots? If certain refs have been paid off, why hasn’t anybody ever spilled the beans?
Listen to sports talk radio for any length of time or read the comments sections of many sports blogs, and you’re bound to hear assertions that the NBA playoffs are rigged. Not only do the refs show favoritism to superstars such as LeBron James and majormarket teams, but there’s also a concerted effort to extend each series to as many games as possible, so the networks have more games (and more commercials) to showcase.
In summer 2007, the NBA was rocked by a gambling scandal when it was reported that veteran referee Tim Donaghy had allegedly wagered on a number of NBA games, including contests Donaghy had worked. Now the conspiracy theorists had legitimate ammunition for their arguments. Here was a guy who could directly influence the point spread by making foul calls (or looking the other way when violations were committed), and he was implicated in a major scandal.
However, nobody was saying the league itself or the TV networks were involved in the alleged corruption. In fact, the NBA cooperated with the FBI investigation—and behind closed doors, league officials were probably talking about how much they wanted to throttle Donaghy for messing with the goose that lays the golden eggs.
There have been game-fixing scandals in sports dating back to the 1919 “Black Sox.” A few big names, including Paul Hornung, Alex Karras, and Pete Rose, have been involved in gambling scandals. Many others have been implicated but never formally charged with anything.
But the rumors about rigged Super Bowls or NBA drafts have never even graduated to plausible theory status, let alone concrete scandals. It simply makes no sense that the NFL or the NBA or Major League Baseball would risk billions of dollars in revenue and decades of building credibility in order to have a storybook upset or a “perfect” match-up.
Sometimes your favorite team loses. Sometimes the superstar gets favorable calls from the officials. Sometimes the refs blow it— and that usually means it was an honest mistake.
Usually.