Super Bowl XL: Your thoughts

[sport historian]

Well, why don't they fix more games for black coaches and quarterbacks? Why hasn't somebody talked? Why hasn't a fix blown up in the face of the fixers? Why do you take Bubba Smith and Irving Fryar at their word without any independent evidence?

The NFL doesn't establish point spreads. The so-called oddsmakers do. A writer would love to break the news of a fix. A liberal writer, Dan Moldea wrote Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football in 1989. Moldea showed that many owners have shady connections, but couldn't find evidence of a fix since Frank Filchock and the 1946 NFL Title game. His conclusion was that the players make too much money for it to be worth it to throw a game, and the NFL needs the fans to see it as an honest game. Moldea very much wanted to find proof of owners fixing games but he could not.

As someone who was a big football fan in the 60's, the AFL was very popular even before Super Bowl III. For example, Lance Alworth was profiled in Sports Illustrated in 1965, as the best receiver in BOTH leagues. The AFL had achieved acceptance by 1968 as the merger was already in place.

 

[backrow]

what NFL needs is a fix of white athletes that have been shunned by the league for years...

 

[bigunreal]

Sport Historian-

No establishment reporter would ever expose such massive corruption as the fixing of NFL games, for the same reason they don't expose the widespread discrimination that exists against white athletes in pro sports. Dan Moldea is a sleazeball who wrote a disinfo book on the RFK assassination. His book about gambling and pro football was a giant tease; he went on talk shows prior to it being published and intimated that Kenny Stabler, for instance, was surrounded by mob figures during his playing career and thus susceptible to throwing games. His book actually concluded that some NFL games were fixed long, long ago, but that had all been corrected and nothing like that had happened in recent times. I actually had an exchange with him on the Free Republic forums, back when Clinton was president and before they banned anyone who didn't worship Dubya. He couldn't answer any of my questions about his ridiculous RFK book.

As for taking Bubba Smith and Irving Fryar at their word, why wouldn't you? What would motivate either of them to make up those stories? In the case of Smith, his comments were briefly reported, with a wink and a smirk, and then the subject was dropped. His acting career appeared to end afterwards. If he expected to get anything out of it, he was about as mistaken as a UFO witness (whose lives are almost invariably ruined by the reporting of their experiences, yet they are ridiculed as inventing them for the "publicity"). As for Fryar, why would anyone volunteer that they had accepted money for throwing a big game, except perhaps out of guilt? Certainly, there would be no motivation at all for him to make that up.

We all accept that pro wrestling is fixed. Most of us acknowledge that boxing is a "shady" sport, filled with organized crime figures and allegations of "taking a dive" and questionable judging. It's not that controversial to allege that pro boxing is fixed. Since pro football is the biggest sport of them all, I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that those who run it are less than honest and not above fixing the outcomes of games for their own reasons.

 

[foreverfree]

I don't follow rasslin' so I can't comment on its fixing.

As for Bubba, he may have fallen off the national radar of demand, but I still see him from time to time on Baltimore TV pitching a law firm. Back during Baltimore's forced NFL exile, his spots for same had him saying, "This team's still in Baltimore."

John

 

[White Shogun]

couldn't find evidence of a fix since Frank Filchock and the 1946 NFL Title game.

How was this game fixed? I mean, by what mechanism, point shaving or something else?

 

[sport historian]

Giant QB Frank Filchock and FB Merle Hapes were approached by a group of gamblers headed by one Alvin Paris to throw the 1946 Title Game against the Bears. Chicago was a 10 point favorite.

Filchock and Hapes never did agree to throw the game, but they didn't report the bribe. The plot was uncovered partly through wiretaps. Thec players were confronted on the night before the game by NY City Mayor William O'Dwyer. Hapes admitted being offered the bribe, Filchock didn't (yet).

NFL Commisioner Bert Bell suspended Mapes, but let Filchock play. Filchock broke his nose early, but stayed in the game. He threw 2 TD passes, but 6 interceptions. Since the fix attempt was known before the game, all eyes were on Frank Filchock. Those who saw the game agreed that Filchock and the Giants played hard and to win, as they had something to prove. However, if the bribe hadn't become public until after the game, Filchock's efforts wouldn't have been looked upon so kindly.

The Bears won 24-14, right on the spread. The four gamblers involved in the fix got prison sentences of 5-10 years.

Merle Mapes and Frank Filchock were suspended after the game, and both went to Canada. Filchock was allowed on the Colt roster in 1950, his last season. He even coached the AFL Denver Broncos in their first two seasons. Both men were "boozers and womanizers" who were hanging around the "wrong crowd." They never did agree to throw the game, however. This illustrates the fact that a bribe attempt is far more likely to fail than to succeed. You can find a full account in The Pro Football Chronicle, 1990 Collier Books.

To Bigunreal, why doesn't Donavan McNabb have 3 Super Bowl rings instead of Tom Brady? If the NFL and it's corporate sponsors are fixing the games and deciding who wins, why didn't they arrange for a team with a media-presentable black QB to win multiple Super Bowls and be the dominant player in America's premier sport?

 

[Bart]

I wasn't aware of that Giants title game story, very interesting. In reading Super Bowl articles I found an SI piece from Dr. Z containing somethimg along the lines of our discussion.

SI: Super Bowl XII was very special to me. It marked the unveiling of Denver's famous Orange Crush defense, and I had just signed a contract to do a book with Lyle Alzado, a paperback original that was to be completed in eight days, or no payment. I was hanging with the Broncos defense all week and I just KNEW they would tear the Cowboys apart. I was so certain of it, also so punchy from lack of sleep, that I led my advance for the New York Post with advice to bettors: "Want to get rich? Take the Broncos and 4 1/2."

Of course the weakness of my argument was that I forgot that Craig Morton and the boys also had to take the field, and Morton went 4 for 15 with four picks. A story broke that he owed the IRS serious money, and there are old Broncos who believe to this day that their quarterback had tanked the contest. Oh yes, Dallas won, 27-10.

 

[speedster]

I think players like Randy White and Harvey Martin had something to do with Morton playing so poorly.Throw in the rest of Doomsday and you have your answer.

 

[Colonel_Reb]

Merle Hapes was among the first Ole Miss players to play professional football, and play it well. He was also one of the first Ole Miss players to get drafted by the Giants. More Ole Miss players have played for the Gianst than any other pro team.