[Rain Man]

A few responses that I would add to the discussion:

First, teams are welcome to make their own mistakes, and are independently managed. The Chiefs can make the bonehead decision to not draft a quarterback for 30 years, and that's their call. The league doesn't care about that stuff, and it's an independent issue.

Second, I don't think that refs are explicitly told to rig games for one team or another, though it wouldn't surprise me at this point. But I have no doubt that they're told to "keep things close" within the context of the game, and if you "keep things close" then that's going to favor the teams with the big quarterback stars since they're more likely to get a bolt of lightning score. Then, voila! Instant drama! And atop that of course you have rules that are tilted toward the attributes that make stars. We want star quarterbacks in this league, so you can't touch a receiver. If you touch a receiver, the quarterback gets four more chances.

Having said that, take a look at the Patriots call yesterday, or the personal foul call on Bernard Pollard in the Broncos game. Do you really want to watch a football game where Bernard Pollard's shoulder bump on Eric Decker warrants four more downs for Peyton Manning? I don't. It's not a sport any more if that's the way things work. Like I said, I don't think that the refs are explicitly told to rig games, but some of these calls that always seem to favor the stars really make me wonder when they produce more short-term revenue for the league.

Third, bearcat's earlier post hit it right on the spot. The league is a business, and the management team is being given orders to increase revenues and profits by XX percent per year. They're going to do that. If the sport of football gets in the way, then that's too bad. They're going to make the changes and do the things that will keep the multi-billion dollar business growing, per their orders. That's what really bothered me about their writing contest. It was a contest about people's love of football, and there was clearly no one in the judging room who loved football and protected the integrity of the game.

Fourth, I stand by my casino example. The league doesn't know in Week 1 who's going to win the Super Bowl. There's too much chaos on the field for that. But they know who they want to position for it from a revenue perspective, and they're going to tweak the odds here and there as they're able. Can the Chiefs win a Super Bowl? Yeah, if a whole bunch of stuff falls right and they can stop Manning and Brady on eight or nine downs when it should be three or four. Or maybe in the long run they can win if they blunder into drafting a media star. But the latter's not going to happen in flyover country.

Fifth, maybe this is just destiny. The league started small and it was a sport. It blew up into a national phenomenon and the dollars exploded and all of a sudden it was a multi-billion dollar business. At that point you have to start treating it like a multi-billion dollar business, and that's when the lawyers and the marketers and the p.r. people come in and the football people leave. But at this point they're just companies, not teams. I'm not going to buy a Medtronics shirt or a Boeing shirt and cheer loudly and high-five when their earnings reports come out. Why should I do that when an NFL company has success?