I have a friend who is deep in conspiracy theories. So much so that he is willing to entertain any conspiracy theory, no matter how absurd it sounds, until he can watch enough YouTube videos, read enough online manifestos, and decide how deep he wants to go with its “new science.”
He also has a major contradiction that I have noticed with others when it comes to sports. He is a major football and Basketball fan, and watches them religiously. However, when his teams lose, he goes on diatribes about how the whole thing is WWE, down to the socks the players where with electrical zapping devices that send them Morse code directions on how they should drop the football during their route they’re running. Any dispute of this always leads to a Godwin’s Law variant: Tim Donaghy, a NBA ref who admitted to attempting to influence games. But what isn’t mentioned is that the NBA caught, outted, and sent Donaghy to prison; something that has tarnished the NBA’s reputation for decades. They used him as a martyr to show what would happen if other refs tried the same. If it were widespread and accepted by the league, how were they able to catch the one guy and no one since has been investigated in such a manner?
Yet, by kickoff the next game, he has completely forgotten all about that and is completely invested once again. Because of this Yoyo’ing, a number of years ago I started having serious conversations with anyone I met who felt this way. These are my incomplete conclusions thus far:
Do you believe Dallas Cowboys fans in the early to mid 90’s believed the game was rigged and the rings they won were as valuable as ring pops? Of course not. The league would have also been far easier to rig back then pre-social media, pre-15 angles of every call, pre-internet. The people who recite these views the strongest are Browns fans, Chargers fans, Lions fans, Clippers fans, Thunder fans, Magic fans… my friend the Vikings fan, the Timberwolves fan.
I believe it is a subconscious trauma response to avoid the far more likely reality: the team that they love and have devoted so much of their life to… sucks. Continued ineptitude has scarred them and they can’t accept it. It would be a rare day to find a Chiefs fan who thought the league was rigged, but I bet a lot of them thought so 10 years ago. And 10 years ago you’d probably be more likely to find an albino alligator than a Patriots fan who believed their rings didn’t really count… but those fans will start popping up if their current losing trend continues.
Sometimes calls trend in the same direction that lead to questioning things. But like most conspiracy theories, reality is likely much more boring and obvious.
It is far more financially beneficial for the nfl to keep it chaotic; that leads to much more interest, engagement, and longterm sustainability. Unlike a tv show where everyone is rooting for one side, rigging games would only turn half your paying customers away/