We all saw the above call last night. I am told there was a similar “soft” holding call in last year’s Superbowl, which I did not watch. As the announcer said at the time of this call, it was a “game changer”. Otherwise, the game was spectacular, with Philadelphia making some amazing passes and catches. But as the game closed out, the referee gave it to the Chiefs. Did he receive a message via his headset to “call something!”?
There’s been a great deal of discussion in the past on this blog about rigged games, and I tend to go along with that idea. I go back to the New England Patriots being caught filming opposing coaches signals during games (Spygate, 2007-2008), strictly forbidden by the league, and being fined an enormous sum, which they might have actually paid. Two New York Jets fans sued the league, saying they had been robbed of a fair contest.
The judge’s ruling was revealing. He said that a ticket to a game entitles a fan to sit in his seat and watch, nothing more. Fans have no say in outcomes or the means by which they are attained.
The NFL is entertainment, nothing more, and if scripted outcomes are a part of it, no laws are broken. It appears to me that Kansas City was selected to win the game, and that the contest, while exciting, was not going as planned, so that referee intervention was needed.
Not too long after the soft holding call, I watched this play – go to 3:45 in the above video and watch an unchallenged touchdown. Of course a defensive screw-up like that is possible, but in the most important and most watched game of the year? Against one of of the best defenses in the league? I watched that play last night, and thought that coupled with the soft holding call, the fix was on. Was Philadelphia told to stand down? Keep in mind, it only takes one player to deliver a cheap touchdown like that, one guy who fails to cover his man.
What is strange about that is that it reminded me of the play below, Superbowl 50, where Carolina Panther quarterback Cam Newton fumbles, and rather than doing the normal football reaction and piling in to get a recovery, stands back and watches. It is not me, but Miles Mathis who said this is evidence of a rigged game, and I concur. You will have to go to YouTube to view it.
However, in the other parts of last night’s game I saw amazing athleticism and superb play calling. I did not care about the outcome, as the only two teams I wanted to succeed this year were the Bengals and Packers, and both fell earlier on. I originally told me wife I was not going to watch the game, as we don’t have a reliable television signal, but Viasat was tolerable last night, and I did succumb to temptation.
Piece of Mindful 
I thought it was telling that Greg Olsen, the ex-player working the broadcast for Fox, was clearly baffled that the call was made in that situation. I thought he made the point several times as to how weak the call was, and even Mike Pereira, the ex-official also on the broadcast, was hardly adamant that it was justified. Today I see the player who the penalty was called on admit that he held the receiver. To me it came off as trying to quiet the complaints about the call and legitimatize the narrative. But then, I think it was scripted as well.
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I heard all of that but did not know the announcers’ names or their roles. Thank for the information.
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NFL is the same every game, the referee is in charge on the field. $$$ is too great to leave anything to chance — like elections, corporate liability, etc. MVP goes to the zebras.
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“We all saw the above call last night.” Not all of us.
We had several friends over for several hours. The background entertainment was a random Monday Night Football game from 1982 with Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell, and Don Meredith, then opening day at Wrigley, 1984. Both programs with their original commercials, both downloaded free from why-ohh-you-tea-you-bee-eeh, and both free of contemporary-cesspool-culture trash and propaganda.
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Good for you, and I hoped you enjoyed yourselves. For myself I would not go back to the 70s or 80s, as it was a time of bad food, automobiles, technology. I heard Jane Fonda today, who by the way never went to Vietnam, talk about that era as idyllic because there were only two billion people. She’s another Gates, a misanthrope, with no perspective of the size and resources of this planet, and how many people it can support. But she is now working to solve the “climate crisis” which does not even exist. I wonder how inside she is, or how stupid.
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I don’t remember the 70’s. Because of age, not drugs.
So I’m not arguing that we should return to that time but rather that we absolutely must stop poisoning ourselves with the mind-rotting properties of contemporary media. ALL media. Sports included.
(All games are rigged now anyway).
Don’t watch or listen to anything produced in the past 20 years. Maybe 30.
Go download an NFL or MLB game from 40 years ago and watch it on your regular system. It’s sublime.
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I’ve noticed many games including in basketball where the score near the end of the game is tied or really close, resulting in overtime. They must want to keep eyes glued to the last seconds for those expensive commercials.
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Good point … with Superbowls, prior to the last decade or twenty years or so, there were some terrible blowouts, 20-30 point blowouts. I will not go through that now except to say when the game is a blowout, viewers lose interest, turn off TVs, play cards and do other stuff. The people who paid large bucks for advertising probably approached (threatened) the league to give them close contests that held viewer interest to the end. You may be seeing that too. It is not hard to fix a sports outcome, only takes a few referees and players. And fixing the games is not, repeat, not illegal.
Last night’s game seemed naturally close, two very good teams, and then the soft holding call and the uncontested touchdown. My humble opinion, they let it play out but for unfathomable reasons, to me anyway, KC was selected to win. It cannot be about money or betting. That is all side betting, in my view.
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I’m not a soccer fan, despite being a Brit, it never interested me. However, I did see this was also true at last year’s World Cup. So much extra time added…wasn’t sure if was for adverts or get the desired score (or both). Equally, tennis, when on one of the main channels here, involving a Brit, you know it’s going to go a certain way (often the Brit winning, just in time for the main evening news).
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I just watched the end of the game as it was originally broadcast and near the end the KC running back was allowed to score so the Eagles would have more than a minute and a half to try and get a tying touchdown- but instead he slid to the one yard line to take a knee as it were. This allowed KC to run the clock down- the thing is, that sliding runner’s foot touched the goal line and they briefly showed that but no comment was made. He hadn’t been touched by a defender. I thought that was a touchdown but a deliberate knee by a ball carrier must end the play and the knee is where it ended, unimpeded momentum be damned.
One thing that was amusing was how the announcers reacted to the sequence of events after the bogus holding call. They seemed flummoxed by the way the game was ending, as if they were prepared to read from an earlier draft, with a different ending. What makes me laugh is that the call of the game has to sound innocent, I guess, and sometimes these guys aren’t read in fast enough when blatant adjustments have to be made on the fly.
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KC played in the very 1st Super Bowl (Tidy Bowl as the rigging is since day one) and lost. With the current events, likely the last. Woof, Bread & Circus for the unwashed masses.
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