It becomes all about the money, not the sport.

Take a look at salary discussions. Whether something is too high or low is viewed in the context of expected performance, not whether does he draw more fans, merchandise, or TV sets. Now there is some of the latter in-play, a lot of it is because the big revenue driver is usually one of the more talented so it helps on both fronts. A strategy to sign Tebow to sell tickets usually isn't used.

Same with owners, good and bad is evaluated by successful seasons, not whether he is turning a profit or not. A judge actually dismissed a case from Ross Perot Jr when Cuban's lawyers submitted a championship photograph. Cuban had seasons were they turned in deficits but also had some playoff success. There was one year before the Series win when the money was mentioned he replied "best -- million I ever lost"

Integrity of the product is important to keep the money flowing so it is all about the money in that aspect. It still pales into comparison to oil companies & the department of defense.

It's show business. They'd script it in a minute if it weren't for all the gambling that depends on the illusion that the game is not rigged. The owners care about money, winning is good only if it means more money.

The gambling doesn't interest them much and it is based on probability. When it comes to football, yards per pass attempt followed by yards per pass attempt defense are the most predictive stats but thing like FGs instead of touchdowns, fumbles, bad bounces lead to true underdogs winning. Also high variance strategy helps true underdogs. Things like that keeps the gambling professionals involved.

The NFL depends on people watching it & coming to the game. If they did script things for ratings and it became apparent to the fan (it would be too hard to anyways) it would have the opposite affect. The idea that anything can happen drives the fan interest but based on the Browns winning title after title in the AAFC fan interest dropped even including attendance in Cleveland. The European soccer leagues features this to some extent (not England or Germany). So to combat this they have measures aimed at ensuring parity such as the reverse order draft & division rank scheduling.

When it comes to money it depends on the owner & setup. In baseball, due to the combination of revenue sharing & broadcasting cash cows such as Fox Sports make losing profitable seen by Pittsburgh & Florida. Same Deadspin documents showed Tampa Bay lost money winning the world series.

It all depends but it is all about money. They would only care about scripting if it made them more money and I just don't see it. They'd ditch what they have for soap opera football or some competitor would have came up with it -- especially since it is impossible to compete with them under the existing model.

It's entertainment, same as Hollywood. And you get the same stuff in Hollywood: Drug addiction, exploitation, sexual assault, corruption, thieving agents, no safety net, etc. The Hollywood stuntmen destroy their bodies and nobody talks about it because it doesn't happen so publicly. I've seen at least 2 articles this year about several stuntmen who died recently.

Any field of entertainment that involves a lot of money will be this way.

People take these jobs because the pay is much higher than they would get doing anything else. Many of them are from a poor background and, assuming they make actually graduate, probably get useless degrees that won't get them much beyond minimum wage. League minimum in the NFL is $420k. Do the math.

Absolutely and completely.

This may very well get real.

There are way too many non-calls or sketchy calls. My favorite is how defensive holding suddenly becomes a non-issue once the playoffs arrive.

in their desperate effort to try to save it. Home teams have a much higher than average winning percentage & lower "excitement" rating (based on lead changes, close games, and comebacks) so they scheduled cities closer together & more divisional match-ups and still most of them are snooze fests.

I wonder how CBS is doing on the ratings.

Admitted he instructed his players to hold. Said refs willnot call it every play.

And they are not winjing. Games are reviewed every week. Ref crews graded. Someone chose not to enforce it last year.

Build drama.

Refs don't feel like bogging down a game for throwing flags on every play. It is a strategy where the benefits outweigh the risks.

Last week a WSJ article about the Seahawks' defensive backs claimed that they "obstruct and foul opposing receivers on practically every play." I took a deeper look in to the numbers and found that as long as referees are reluctant to throw flags on the defense in pass coverage (as claimed in the article), holding the receiver is a very efficient defensive strategy despite the risk of being penalized.

The following is an analysis using the concepts of expected utility, expected cost, and bayesian statistics.

The reason defensive holding is an optimal strategy comes down to one word. Economics. The referee's reluctance to call penalties on the defensive secondary is analogous to a market inefficiency. The variance in talent on NFL rosters, coaching staffs, and front offices between the best and worst teams in the league is probably very small. Successful teams win within a small margin. Seattle has found a way to exploit a relaxation in marginal constraints within the way the game is called that their competitors have not, and turned it into a competitive advantage.

If you think about committing a penalty in the same way as committing a crime, the expected utility is essentially the same. The expected utility (EU) for defensive holding is (opponent loss of down due to incomplete pass - probability of being penalized x cost of penalty). In other words, EU is the benefit of an incomplete pass minus the cost of the penalty times the probability of getting caught.

http://archive.advancedfootballanalytics.com/2014/01/thomas-bayes-would-approve-of-seattles.html

The fact that he is using a strategy aimed at finding an edge where there isn't many edges left kinda invalidates the rigged theory. It is based on the assumption a ref doesn't feel like slowing down a game by throwing flag-after-flag.

Also Richard Sherman says he teaches corners and defensive back from concealing illegal contact from the refs -- by doing it in a way where he doesn't notice it.

It gives an unfair advantage to teams that use this tactic.

You turned out to be correct in that fewer penalties on average tend to be fewer than the regular season average. Some years it is more and while smaller samples can be used to explain I think there is more of a "let them play" mentality and this tactic would take advantage it in as it is very smart strategy when applying economic concepts to it.

If it was rigged there wouldn't be so much of the human factor when it comes to refs.

There is more evidence our eyes miss things than there is of refs fixing games from orders from the league.

NFL head of officiating Dean Blandino said in a video distributed to the media that although the NFL saw a decline in penalties per game from the regular season into the wild card round, that isn’t the intent of the league. Instead, Blandino has told his officials that a penalty in the regular season should be a penalty in the playoffs, and a play they’d let go in the regular season should be a play they let go in the playoffs.

“The philosophy in the postseason, the direction is no different from the regular season when we talk with our officials,” Blandino said. “We want them to call the game the same way. I know fouls were down this weekend, but the direction is the same, we want them to call the game the same way all year. We’ve told our officials, don’t be overly technical, we don’t want to call what you’d consider ticky-tack fouls. We want to make sure the fouls are there and we’re getting flags down when they are there, and not letting teams take advantage or push the envelope. That’s been the direction all year and it will continue to be the direction during the postseason.”

In practice, it doesn’t always appear to play out that way. Sunday’s 49ers-Packers game, in particular, looked like a game in which the officials decided to let a lot of things go. But the NFL’s stance is that the rules don’t change in the playoffs, and the way the officials enforce the rules shouldn’t change, either.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/01/11/nfl-tells-refs-to-call-the-playoffs-the-same-as-the-regular-season/

Wild card weekend from last year was the biggest drop which didn't even feature the Seahawks. Things vary by crew as well. Here are the stats for most penalties by crew

Jeff Triplette 244
Scott Green 241
Walt Coleman 238
Jerome Boger 238
Walt Anderson 233
John Parry 233
Carlton Cheffers 221
Ed Hochuli 213
Gene Steratore 210
Ron Winter 209
Bill Leavy 201
Clete Blakeman 197
Tony Corrente 196
Terry McAulay 191
Bill Vinovich 183
Mike Carey 181
Peter Morelli 154

http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/111356/inside-slant-2013-referee-report

Everyone knows playoffs are refed differentlt, thus dishonest games. Seattle would have never won if games were called straight. I doubt the Ravens would havw won the year before. But that whole Ray Lewis comeback was sure dramatic was it not?

fewer holding calls were the biggest change.

I will say by the rule book Baltimore should have been charged with pass interference on one of the 49ers final plays. The receiver was past the 5 years with the defender engaging contact which was defensive holding. Once the ball is in the air if the contact is still there then it becomes pass inteference. There are people still out there that defend the call and argue a penalty shouldn't be called.

I will also say it was consistent as there were pass interference calls that could have been called against either team but wasn't. I do hate if they call games loose to suddenly get tight on some plays.

There is a Patrick Peterson wired from the Detroit game last season where he goes up to the ref and lets him know that since he is a physical corner & Megatron is a physical receiver that there will be some contact basically appealing to him to call the game loose.

NFL actually keeps making things harder for the defense though.

The NFL has instructed its officials to include two defensive penalties -- both of which restrict contact by pass defenders -- among their major points of emphasis for the 2014 season, I've confirmed. Historically, points of emphasis can lead to at least a temporary spike in penalties as players adjust. In this case, it would be reasonable to conclude that defenders will have even less margin for error in stopping offenses that already are operating at historic levels.

The league has not yet confirmed this development publicly, but officials will soon begin communicating it with coaches, players and media members during camp visits. Former NFL vice president officiating Mike Pereira, who now works for Fox Sports, first revealed the information after attending the league's annual officiating clinic last week.

<snip>

For those who need a refresher: Regarding illegal contact, defenders are not allowed to use their arms or hands to restrict receivers when they are 5 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, as long as the quarterback is in the pocket with the ball. Defenders also can't hit receivers in the back within that 5-yard zone. Violation of these mandates leads to a 5-yard penalty and an automatic first down.

Defensive holding, meanwhile, refers to a defender grabbing an eligible receiver or his jersey with his hands, and also prohibits defenders from using their arms to cut off the receiver or guide him in another direction. Like illegal contact, it carries a 5-yard penalty and an automatic first down. We can probably expect officials to apply special focus to grabbing jerseys, a move crafty cornerbacks have learned and refined in order to hide it from officials.

http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/132346/inside-slant-pass-defense-takes-a-hit

As a practical matter, it’s the Legion of Boom rule. In 2013, the Seahawks brazenly committed illegal contact and holding, knowing that, if illegal contact happens on every play, the officials won’t throw a flag on every play. In an intriguing segment that aired on NBCSN’s NFL Turning Point, Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman was displaying to a teammate on the practice field techniques for concealing illegal contact.

This year, the officials may be far more inclined to throw flags. Per Pereira, the 2004 push to stop defensive backs from pushing and tugging and shoving receivers resulted in an increase in illegal contact fouls from 79 to 191.

That will lead to more intriguing comments from Sherman, especially in light of what he said in January.

“The game was allowed to be played physical, and that’s why you had so many run games,” Sherman said regarding the way the NFL used to be. “That’s an old school brand of football. I don’t know how old the rules are, but since these rules have come, you look up and every receiver, every play they could drop a wide-open pass and turn around and look for a flag. I think that kind of ruins the game. That kind of ruins the intensity, the whole DNA of football and what it is if you see flags every single play.”

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/07/21/get-ready-for-the-legion-of-boom-rule/

So I have a good idea except the most corrupt thing the NFL does, the article doesn't mention. Shaking down cities for sweetheart deals made possible using the all-or-nothing approach and the supply of fixed entry pro league teams and the demand from cities to host one.

Normally it would break anti-trust laws but impossible to address because of the "taxpayers can not be considered consumers" loophole established by Supreme Court precedent.

Other than that as well as the dirty business of head injuries and misuse & prescribing of medications as well the rise of these steroid dealers which wouldn't exist or appear legitimate without the pro leagues -- there are far more businesses, far more corrupt than the NFL. For example, the NCAA.

A relocation strengthens future relocation threats and this is where the rent seeking behavior comes in. Other businesses taking advantage of laws & regulation in their favor doesn't make it better or OK. In fact it shocks me you'll defend this but not players seeking disability benefits.

Even if a city says no but the county or state says yes & the way these are financed, the city budgets still end up being harmed.

Like my job has and most people's job have. NFL player should have that also.

little to do with this story.

but the major difference is the rent seeking behavior. Milwaukee built a new place to lure the Packers so the other owners of the NFL threatened to relocate the Packers for them if they didn't upgrade county stadium so viola Lambeau Field. It was financed through a stock sale & a bond issue put up to a vote. The municipal got their money back from the investment.

Similar when they wanted upgrades in 2003. To finance it they sold stock.

The Green Bay market is very profitable for both the NFL & the franchise which is helped by national broadcasting but if there was a big drop one way or the other you'd see similar things and majority rule of NFL owners can impact things such as grandfathering in the Packers when they agreed to the current model.

is different from other NFL teams, but most of the rest of it is not different. There is so much TV money in the NFL, that the playing field, money wise, is almost even when compared to MLB.

You don't get a say, it doesn't increase in value, it can't be transferred. It's really no different than buying a commemorative brick at Levi's, except that I don't think that doing so would make me a owner of the Niners or of the stadium (FYI: I didn't buy a brick, they get entirely enough money out of me for my seats, concessions and the occasional jersey, thanks.)

On the other hand the Packers and their "stock" certificates probably keep a lot of people in the framing business busy in that part of the world, so I guess that's something.

http://deadspin.com/5866292/the-feel-good-scam-of-owning-the-packers

Just highlighting the huge difference between the rent seeking behavior & other teams and the funding behind it. People that buy it choose to buy it, not like the 49ers subsidy but unlike pretty much most teams it is a good deal that relies heavily on PSLs. If not, Santa Clara will take in massive debt which plagues pretty much all modern stadium deals.

On the other hand this stock gives Green Bay and advantage other teams don't have. If Green Bay wants to raise funds they can sell more shares of their stock -- other teams don't have that option.

sign a release that states they know the sport is dangerous and can cause permanent and long term medical issues.

The players were hero's in college and are adored by the public as pros and makes millions. And then whine about it after they are cut.

I guess only the players don't know it is a dangerous sport. Because everyone else does.

Based on the logic we shouldn't award black lung disability benefits (or veterans disability for that matter) and they behaved like the coal companies withholding evidence. Not just the withholding evidence, how you handle when presented with evidence of the concussion. Plummer tore his shoulder in a game, Shannahan in an effort to keep him in the game and discourage opponents from targeting injury he officially listed "concussion" on the injury report. This was @ San Diego, 2003.

Knowledge isn't as widespread as people make it seem. CTE wasn't well known a decade ago, certainly not in the 70s. Also a head injury doesn't have the obvious looks of an injury as other things so that impacts the evaluation of risk.

Aside from the money who without the players, the billions in revenue wouldn't be possible, it is an ethical issue that shouldn't be treated as such in any other interest. Why is OSHA around. If health and safety of employees and general public don't matter if they already well understand what is the point of them?

for what constitutes a team.

Neither LA or the NFL needs each other and you hit the bulls-eye with LA as the implied threat being more profitable the league.

I disagree about LA. First, the Rams were in LA for 50 years. The major issue was the blackout rule and LA Coliseum. Also there were a lot of owners & coaching changes, the Coliseum lacked revenue generating amneties which is why St. Louis was seen as the more profitable option but it is ironic they could go back as a revenue generating stadium in the LA market could be seen as more profitable for the 24th ranked revenue team.

There is still strong support for Oakland as well, I believe they are the primary team for the city for NFL broadcast coverage

It's the NFL and corruption is not new with them.