Colts:Fixed Or Chokers?

[jaxvid]

well said bigunreal!

I can think of a very possible recent sports "fix". Juiced baseballs for the McGuire/Sosa season HR battle and for Bonds *record* year. I know they used specially marked balls for the occasion and it would have been easy to juice them up. Baseball really needed a lift at the time so I wouldn't put it past them. At the time I thought Geez, it's so easy for these guys to get homers. When others went after the record in previous years they didn't get sh*t. No pitches to hit, no breaks, no 3 homer games down the stretch. It just all seemed too contrived, Even for McGuire.

 

[cxt7]

Jim rome had michael franzese on his show today, for anyone who does not know who he is (the x-mob boss in Ny) he was talking about gambling and pro sports players. I guess he used to run some of the largest illegal gambling rings in the country. He was talking about players like c.fielder blowing 550 thousand dollars in a 24 hour period (fielder is now bankrupt and homeless) he also said because athletes are such competitors that they are 2 to 3 times more likly to gamble. This made me think if these players are willing to throw millions of dollars out the window gambling there is no doubt they would be willing to make some of the money back by fixing a game or two.

 

[Don Wassall]

Match-Fixing Scandal Rocks Germany

The Deutsche Fussball Bund (DFB) has announced an investigation into referee Robert Hoyzer after the official was accused of betting on matches that he controlled in a scandal that has shocked German football.

Hoyzer, 25, refereed the DFB-Pokal clash between Paderborn and Hamburger SV last August, a game that the non-league side suprisingly won 4-2. Hoyzer sent-off HSV striker Emile Mpenza and awarded Paderborn two penalties in the game.

At a five-hour emergency DFB meeting on Monday, the German FA decided to extend their investigation into match-rigging to another five matches, four involving Hoyzer. These are the zweite liga games Rot-Weiss Essen v. Koeln and Ahlen v. Wacker Burghausen. The investigation will also examine the regional league games between Paderborn and Chemnitzer, Eintracht Braunschweig and FC St Pauli, and Wuppertaler against Werder Bremen Amateurs.

Hoyzer has denied charges of rigging the cup tie after betting on the result. "In the interest of the credibility of German football, we will do everything to clear up this case and we are therefore making all known facts available to the public prosecution service," said DFB co-president Theo Zwanziger. Hoyzer told German tabloid Bild: "I have never bet on a game I have refereed. The accusations have left me pensive, uneasy and dismayed. I cannot comprehend them, and also cannot understand that my refereeing colleagues could think me capable of such a thing."

The shock cup defeat of HSV at Paderborn was a contributing factor in Klaus Toppmoeller's subsequent dismissal as HSV coach. There is no possibility that the games affected would be replayed if irregularities were confirmed as the DFB-Pokal has now reached the quarter-final stage.

http://www.goal.com/NewsDetail.aspx?idNews=43962&progr=1

 

[bigunreal]

Wow. Good thing that kind of stuff could never happen here. Just like
assassinations; in the rest of the world, when political leaders are
killed, they are killed for political reasons, usually as some form of
coup. Here in America, however, we must attribute this to "lone nuts,"
who are usually referred to by all three names and act as they do for
no apparent reason.

 

[Colonel Callan]

I've always thought games were fixed here and there. I can point at the
Patriots in 2001, their AFC title match against Oakland. Brady was plowed
and fumbled the ball. Inarguable. Brady was inconsolable as he marched
to the sidelines. However, officials intervened, and things were turned
around to help New England win a tight game. Oakland should probably
have been the Superbowl Champs that year, but they were robbed.
(Oakland has had a history of problems with this - look at the 2000 and
2001 playoffs, four games, no penalties against their opponents - and I
am not an Oakland fan)

Doug Williams' Superbowl win was rigged in my mind. The Denver corners
and defensive backs suddenly started staying 10 - 15 yards off their men
for the most part. Then a horrible, horrible passer has no problem hitting
his men and throwing what was then a record number of TD passes.
Yeah, he came through in the big one. Sure.

I think officials are many times the fulcrum when it comes to fixing
games, although a player or group of players can also be convinced to
tank things. Who knows what goes on in the NFL (or other leagues)
behind closed doors? Hell, they've spent enough time jockeying rules to
try and help black QB's who tend to take one look and run, almost all of
them seemingly incapable of looking off receivers, etc. Almost all, but not
all. Anything to help Michael Vick. He can run fast and gain yardage...
against bad teams. Otherwise he's not really a QB.

Boxing, whether it's fighters throwing a fight or judges rendering
outlandish decisions, has had fixed events for seemingly eons. Why would
other sports be different?

 

[bigunreal]

Colonel Callan,



Your point about boxing is right on target. Whenever I've tried to
convince people that pro sports are fixed, I always start by mentioning
pro wrestling. Of course, they invariably say "that's not real."
Exactly. Then when I mention boxing, most of them will admit it's full
of crooked characters, and remember at least some fights where one
fighter seemed to take a dive, or an obviously wrong decision was
rendered. Yet these same people, who all admit, for instance, that the
second Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight was "won" by Clay with "the
invisible punch," still admire and respect the future Ali, and think he
was "great." Hmmm. Became "champion" with an "invisible punch," but
that doesn't effect your view of his career? Oh well, none of this is
an easy sell. To me, it's a small jump from there to the NFL, where
gambling is a firmly entrenched part of the sport. When you throw in
the social engineering aspect, which we call the Caste system, I think
it's fairly obvious that these games are "scripted" to at least some
degree.

 

[speedster]

If there was ever a fight that looked rigged it would have to be the secound Ali-Liston fight.This is my opinion.I have seen super slo-mo footage of that supposed invisible punch and Ali really does tag Liston and then proceeds to stand over him shaking his fist,not unlike plenty of black football players who have just sacked the QB or made a good tackle.Because of Ali's overzealousness,I think Liston was afraid to get up,coupled with the fact that he went down from a not too"devestating"punch,In his mind If he did get back up he would only be knocked down again and be embarassed so he just gave it up,although it certainly looked like he could have gotten back up

 

[bigunreal]

Also, regarding Sonny Liston, remember how he died mysteriously some
years later. The TV show "Unsolved Mysteries" had a nice piece on his
death, and even related it to the mob and his refusal to take a dive in
a fight (although, in true p.c. television style, they claimed the
"fixers" wanted him to take a dive against a journeyman white fighter).
The Ali fights were never mentioned, but if there was anything
suspcious about his death, I would guess that maybe Sonny was running
his mouth too much about those fights being fixed, and perhaps was
silenced because of it.

 

[jaxvid]

There is a web site with the FBI files on Liston as he was being investigated for that very thing. Of course it all died when he did.

 

[Realgeorge]

Yuri Says:


Games are fixed all over the place. Note Mr. Wassal's post of the German Bundesliga Soccer scandal of referees fixing games. Ugly! You bet it's fixed. NFL, MLB, NHL games of note have referees "put away the whistle" as necessary. Duke basketball gets the world's best referee boost. Michael Jordan took forty-five steps before each monster dunk. Barry Bonds strike zone is slimmer than Twiggy and shorter than Pete Rose. Pele's dribble around statues on the soccer field. Navy never beats Notre Dame in football, especially when the ref can guarantee Fourth-and-one to ND when they actually lost a yard.


I only think that Fixes are, from time to time, cleverly concealed and staggered in time to mask their existence -- just like the multi-generational conspiracy of the Rothschild Trust. They show up at irregular intervals to throw good folks off the scent

 

[Don Wassall]

I'm sure that 99 out of 100 Americans in the 1950s would have sworn on a Bible that game shows weren't fixed. They soon found out differently.

There was a point shaving scandal in college basketball in the 1950s. Can't remember the details (some here might), but it was a huge story when it was exposed. Later, in the '80s and '90s the same type of scandals were unearthed, but this time around it barely caused a ripple.

I wouldn't be surprised at anything anymore. Most of the major events in American history, in particular assassinations and the events used as pretexts for war (including 9/11) appear to have happened much differently than what the media and history books tell us. A lot of Americans believe the moon landings were staged, and after reading the arguments of some researchers in this field over the past few years, it wouldn't surprise me if they were.

We are now engaged in a war of aggression halfway around the world that was based on lies, with more apparently to come. We live in a world of media lies and distortions and it gets worse all the time. Thank God for the Internet and all the other alternative media sources out there. Those that think that sports is pure, that racial politics and racial slotting (the caste system), and the altering of results, from tweaking to outright fixes, doesn't take place are as naive as American of the '50s who religiously followed the game shows of that era. Mencken was right when he wrote that Americans are the most gullible people in the world. Edited by: Don Wassall

 

[Colonel Callan]

Don, a lot of what you write is on the money. There is a set of agendas
driving almost everything. If you try to point this out, you are regarded
as some type of nutty conspiracy theorist or 'buff' who doesn't
understand everything is random...

(The moon landings were real - the attempts to discredit them are part of
the anti-Western thrust of these agendas, look at the people really behind
those claims. A certain group of hateful hypocrites felt whitey was
getting too big for his britches, and more $$$$ were flushed down the
toilet for social programs, charity, foreign aid and such in order to derail
the real space program)

 

[Don Wassall]

I'm open minded on the moon landing stuff. I personally know a couple people who have written books saying they were staged, and they see things as we do on other issues as well, but I know what you're saying about others and their motivations. I would love to see a very active space exploration program. The fact that it was halted dead in its tracks over 35 years ago (the manned part of it; with the rest of it being greatly cut back) I would agree was motivated by the deliberate ongoing destruction of our civilization.

I'm just open-minded on everything these days. If the media says it happened a certain way, I believe the proper response is a healthy skepticism and an inquiring mind. So much has been turned upside down that it is much more productive to start with the opposite of what we're told because that is often closer to the truth.

 

[bigunreal]

Colonel Callan,



Read some of the stuff out there about the moon landing hoax. You can
also download a free video by the late Jim Collier, one of the brothers
who produced the great "Votescam" series about voting fraud in the
1980s. I'm not sure of the url, but if you google under his name and
moon hoax video, it'll come up. Also, the Fox network-of all
people-aired a nice documentary about the fake moon landings a few
years back. What impressed me most about it was the fact that Gus
Grissom-one of the 3 Apollo astronauts to die in a launch pad fire in
1967-had been a vocal critic of NASA and their lack of safety
precautions as well as the whole Apollo program in general. He was
also, interestingly enough, slated to be the first man to walk on the
moon. Grissom's widow and son were feautred in the Fox program, and
they minced no words, directly accusing NASA of killing Grissom and his
fellow astronauts to shut him up. Apparently, they have been attempting
to sue NASA for years, without success. For those of you who don't
think there is a conspiracy by the media to cover up for their masters
behind the scenes, how do you explain the silence of "60 Minutes,"
"20/20," etc. over a story like this? The wife and family of a high
profile astronaut accuses NASA of killing him, and no one thinks that's
newsworthy? Anyhow, there is a lot of evidence to indicate that no one
went to the moon, but I'll just mention one thing. Look at the sky, in
all the lunar photos; the moon has no atmosphere, which should have
meant a breathtaking sight overhead, with stars, planets and
constellations visiblle in a stunning way, like nothing ever seen on
earth. Instead, the sky is always black, with no celestial bodies
visible. Except, of course, the photos of the big, blue earth. Anyhow,
it's a fascinating subject, and will provide another reason for 99% of
the people you meet to think you're a real kook.

 

[bigunreal]

I was recently leafing through a new book by ex-mobster Henry
Hill, who inspired the movie "Good Fellas." In it, he mentions
his frienship with Joe Namath (as well as some of his fellow "wise
guys"), and also touches on the subject of Super Bowl III. This was,
IMHO, the most obviously fixed NFL game ever. Hill states that Namath
told him, in no uncertain terms, to bet everything he could on the
game. Hill never mentions the word "fix," but the implication is
there.

 

[Colonel Callan]

Bigunreal, I'm very familiar with both sides of the moon landing
argument. But I won't get into a big discussion here on a sports site.
About a year and a half ago, I was involved a big and hilarious internet
'brawl' over the topic. (My father was what you could call a big player in
the space program before the haters derailed it) Grissom wasn't the victim
of a conspiracy - but his death (in Apollo 1 with White and Chaffee) led to
many changes, including stopping the use of pure oxygen in spacecraft
and the use of velcro to avoid the chance of even the smallest spark or
arcing. The Fox network stuff was interesting - but actually a lot of it
hare-brained if one knows a bit about photography, light, refraction, etc.
They were playing off people's ignorance on a lot of things. The space
program was derailed because the accomplishments were too big, too
awesome, for our enemies to handle. These people(s) hate us. And that
all dovetails right back the reasons we are where we are. Why a site like
this has to exist.

 

[foreverfree]

The Jack Squirek interception took place in Super Bowl XVIII. I watched the highlights thereof over the weekend on either the NFL Network or ESPN Classic, I forget which. Anyway just before showing Squirek's interception, they flashed back to a similar situation and location on the field during the Redskins/Raiders meeting during that regular 1983 season. That day, Theismann screen-passed to Joe Washington for a 60+ yard game. Which may have been the reason Gibbs tried it again in the Super Bowl.

In last year's SB, the Patriots' winning FG was set up by John Kasay's shanked KO after the Panthers had tied it with a little over a minute remaining. I'm surprised no one on this thread applied the fix question to that. When it happened and Vinitieri kicked the winning FG, a poster on FreeRepublic likened the NFL to, yep, WWF.

ff

 

[bigunreal]

foreverfree,



Good point about the earlier Redskins/Raiders game that season.
However, the circumstances were a little different. In the Super Bowl,
there were, if I recall correctly, less than 20 seconds left in the
half, and the Redskins had the ball deep in their own territory. In
that situation, especially with the way the half had gone for the
Redskins, a team would normally just kneel on the ball. If you want to
be extra bold, which almost no team would do that deep in their own end
of the field, you'd fling the ball down the field a couple of times and
hope for a penalty or a deflection. To expect a screen pass to go more
than 80 yards, with that little time left (the clock would probably run
out before a play of that length ended) would be a little unrealistic.
Actually, that's being kind; if it was a legitimate call, it was
moronic on the part of Gibbs. And, of course, it was a terrible pass on
the part of Theismann. How do you not see Squirek, or take a lot of
care with the ball in that situation?

 

[right winger]

The Patriots were a stronger all-around team, but tell me how can a professional football team not have a hurry-up offense, especially at the end of a Super Bowl? Can a quarterback and a coaching staff be that idiotic? The coaches are in constant contact with McNabb on the sideline and through his headset: "Ok, Donovan, no need to keep huddling up the team in this situation. You're going to be passing every play, just get them to the line as quickly as possible. Let's see some urgency! And by the way genius, quit throwing passes in the middle of the field. Throw to the sideline so that we can stop the clock."

Very strange. It doesn't necessarily indicate a fix of any kind but it sure is inexplicable.

 

[bigunreal]

Right Winger,



It was exactly this kind of thing that initially led me to theorize
about fixed NFL games. If every fan can understand that a team should
have a sense of urgency in such a situation, and if even the
commenatators are questioning it, how indeed could the coach and QB be
doing something so illogical? They're supposed to be "experts" at this;
it's their job!



What really drives me nuts in recent years is the absolute refusal by
defenses to cover some RBs out of the backfield. Wesbrook yesterday was
so wide open, so often, that you have to wonder how a
defense-especially one coached by a guru like Belicheck-could not see
that someone should have been on him at all times. This brings to mind
the situation that existed for a few years in St. Louis, where Marshall
Faulk floated out of the backfield during every game, and somehow was
wide open time and time again. The defenses just couldn't catch on to
those complex patterns, I guess, despite allegedly watching loads of
film of their opponent. Uh, wouldn't they have caught that tendency to
go to Faulk out of the backfield constantly, and maybe assign someone
to shadow him the entire game to stop that? Guess not, because no one
did for a few years. Priest Holmes in Kansas City was even more wide
open many times ouf ot the backfield, and they didn't have a Bruce or
Holt for defenses to worry about. Still, despite the Chiefs basically
ignoring their WRs for a couple of seasons, opposing teams regularly
let Holmes garner 200 total yards per game. Hmmm- we're playing the
Chiefs, we've watched film of their offense, and one guy basically gets
almost all their yards. Uh, what do we do to stop them? Evidently, not
key on Holmes, because no one stopped him in those seasons.



Anyhow, just food for thought. BTW, thought the Super Bowl was a typical bore, despite the close score.