Why the NFL is rigged: thoughts on Trump

So we’ve all heard the allegations: the NFL is fixed.  Refs make shitty calls at decisive moments tilting the balance in favor of whichever team Roger Goodell has selected to win.  Why else do the play reviews get routed back to New York and NFL headquarters?  Along with college football nearly $100 million are bet on NFL games – you think outcomes are left to chance?

What?  You haven’t heard of this?  Well I’ll admit it is not an open and shut case – no Bill Hicks’ “case-fucking-closed” on the idea that the winner of each NFL game is predetermined.  I’ll admit that.  Yet, my mind can’t help but jump to such conclusions.  This is based on a few things, like Brian Tuohy’s work and things I’ve seen: those fucked-up calls/no-calls that even the announcers feel the refs and reviewers get wrong.  But my idea that the NFL is rigged is also based on an overall impression; something arrived at by the gestalt of weird calls, built-in vagueness of the rulebook and the disheartening slavish devotion of the fans.  It just feels like something is not right and I find watching games difficult (though I still watch sometimes – it is entertaining, goddamit).

Let me now translate this to the negative views many people have of Trump.  As my views of the NFL may seem irrational so too – to me and others – do the reactions people have to Trump.

Let me be straightforward with two things.  One, I pay a lot of attention to foreign policy and foreign relations.  And secondly, I have a penchant for world-changing, dare I say, cataclysmic events.  So my hands-off Trump policy, which was decided on mostly subconsciously, has keyed on things Trump has said about foreign policy to a great extent.  And he gets passing marks, in this regard.  My approval springs from the hope that the pain and suffering being inflicted by the US on other parts of the world right now may perhaps be brought to an end.  You still with me?  Let’s let other countries defend themselves and Jesus Christ let me turn a blind eye to the fact that the reason we are over wherever is not simply to intervene in a squabble amongst other nations but because we have financial and strategic interests in those countries.

So maybe you can see, for the above two reasons, why I’m not super freaked out by Trump.  On those issues.  (Hillary destroyed Libya and bragged about it – case fucking closed and that is why it would have been unconscionable for me to even consider voting for her.)  You probably can’t, though, and that is what is fascinating to me: for some folks Trump is the devil incarnate. 

What is this dog whistle?  That is the crux.  For some folks there is something that is just not right with Donny Tinyhands.  On paper I get it but I do not have the visceral reaction so many seem to have.  Perhaps to belittle all involved, this is analogous to my NFL feelings, that something is just not right.  I know he said some shitty things in the run up to the election – I think this is what a lot of people are reacting to.  And those controversial statements didn’t bother me at all.  Our reactions are crafted in our hearts and not in our minds.  To be honest I get that “something is just not right” feeling about our whole country at times.