More than once during my years with the Oakland Raiders, Al Davis would emphasize to me that “we” are in the entertainment business. He respected fan interest as what drove the success of every franchise and that close competitive games and offense were two primary ingredients towards inspiring fan interest.
When defenses become too dominant in the game, the rules committee will adjust the regulations to aid the offenses. If the league becomes one-sided with just a few teams dominating the action, the league will search out ways to balance the competitive scale. The NFL draft is a clear example of this. The league rewards the losing teams with higher draft selections in an obvious attempt to assist the weaker teams.
There are also powers to be at work that are more sinister.
There have long been accusations that some games are fixed. In recent times, there were rumblings that when the Kansas City Chiefs took the field with an officiating crew of seven that the opponents of Andy Reid and his team were outnumbered 18-11. This conspiracy theory was hot last season in particular, when the Chiefs seemed to get every break in a year that featured the most one-score decisions in favor of a single team.
I don’t subscribe to the “fix is in” theory for two reasons. First, I was with a team and observed firsthand the focus on winning and never experienced even a hint that my team would surrender a win on purpose. My second reason for discarding the dark side of NFL competition is that I can’t do anything about it and it would only mess with my proven handicapping methods if I tried to incorporate when and where a game might not be totally legitimate.
Yet, in 2002, I was rooting for the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association to beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the sixth game of their playoff series. The officiating in that game was so one-sided that at one point I said out loud to my wife, “They aren’t going to let the Kings win this game.”