There is a recurring question in today's sports world, especially in the National Football League (NFL): Is the NFL rigged? Some may say it is, others not so much, but altogether I feel that to choose whether or not the league is rigged is up to each individual fan of the game.
As many, if not most NFL fans know, the league was formed in August of 1920 in Canton, Ohio in the showroom of an automobile dealership. According to history, it was formed as a gambling which was illegal even then, though it had the coverup of "entertainment". The earliest owners such as Art Rooney, Tim Mara and others had strong ties to said gambling as well as horse racing, which had been around for years prior to the foundation of the NFL. A Colts players after the third AFL-NFL Championship Game came out and stated the game was "set-up" for the Jets to win. This would be one of the first publicly known instances where it would be asked whether or not the game was rigged. The second incident stemmed from that issue, as the league at the time supposedly needed the Jets to win to have a case as to why the two leagues should merge into the modern NFL, which would not happen until 1970.
The issue of rigging and whether or not the NFL is true entertainment is debatable as the NFL is a single entity, unlike other sports franchises, and is classified by law as "entertainment" so they can control the outcome of games with dealing with the pressures of governmental lawsuits. An argument could be that teams like New England, Pittsburgh,and Green Bay are usually in the playoffs or have won Championships in the past, while the teams are good, it is possible the league is rigging it so the best teams make the playoffs, while also noting those teams sell tickets, merch, and boost ratings.
An example of potential rigging: The 2001-2002 Patriots began the season 0-2, they finish the year and go to Oakland, get the infamous and now defunct "Tuck Rule", and become such an "amazing" team mostly due to the tragedy of 9/11 (may the victims rest in peace) as they were the 3rd closest team to the tragedy behind the Giants and Jets but have the team name as the New England Patriots. They go on to win the Championship and we continue to hear about how great they were, even now. Follow that year up with 2003-2004 and 2004-2005, Bush's War on Terror is in full swing and again the US goes through a surge of "patriotism" and the Pats win back to back titles (Spygate being part of that issue). The Seahawks the following year should have won XL, however by questionable calls, the Steelers won. The issue here is that a referee from that game came out a couple years back and publicly stated they did not call that game the way they should have, identifying key missed calls as well as the possibility of the Seahawks winning their first title nearly a decade prior to when they actually did. The following year, Peyton and the Colts playing against Brady's Patriots and several missed calls, as well as questionable ones were made, allowing the Colts to beat the Patriots in that title game prior to playing the Bears.
2007 saw the Pats going 16-0 in the regular season while amassing several records, however, as we know, the Giants beat the 17-14. The Giants were a #6 seed in the playoffs for the NFC, barely making it to the playoffs, and in the NFC title game, Brett Favre's last game as a Packer, he threw a pick to seal the Giants victory. In the Super Bowl, the Pats should have shellacked the Pats, but were held to a mere 14 points. I think this is where the NFL wanted to step in to stop them from doing so and going completely undefeated. In a second case only 2 years later during the 2009-2010 season, the Saints who were still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, beat the Colts for their first title, but was it rigged because of the hurricane's devastation or was it Goodell's attempt at slowing down a team that didn't need another title so soon? Viewers were polled during the 2011-2012 playoffs and several wanted a Pats-Giants rematch and what do you know, that is what the fans got.
