Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

sluggermatt15 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 11:02 am I'm not on board with all this fixing and rigging that people say about the NFL. I don't believe it.

If anything, I say there is more bias/favoritism in college football. It seems to be the same teams - Ohio State, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, et al. - that are at the top every season. There is far less parity there than in the NFL.

The same teams always being on top in college football comes with the territory of recruiting over drafting. The best recruits are often going to want to go to the best teams and the best teams are often going to have some of the best resources. While the idea for parity was good when it first started out in the NFL it has gone too far in that direction now however. There is virtually no difference from one team to another these days in the NFL. There would be no need to fix or rig anything in college football because the popular teams are usually always going to have the best rosters anyways.

This will never happen but I do think the NFL needs to go back down to 28 teams. 32 teams is really too many. Getting rid of a few teams would allow the remaining teams to build more depth so their rosters wouldn't be so paper thin anymore to the point to where they can't handle injuries anymore. A lot of these ridiculous rules have come about because rosters just don't have any depth anymore and having a couple key injuries basically ruins a season these days.

Sometimes I think the NFL's ultimate goal is having 16 teams finish 9-8 and the other 16 finish 8-9. Now there's your parity!

There's no way the league is gonna downsize. In fact, I think it's just a matter of time before we see a 4- or 8-team division/s in Europe. Maybe a decade or two off, but I believe it's headed that way. The regular season will also expand to 18, then 20 games. There'll be no preseason.

40 teams playing a 20-game schedule? There's a nice symmetry there. Again, probably won't happen in my lifetime, but I can see it. Hell, who back in 1955 or so, 12 teams playing a 12-game sked with a single title game, would imagine the size and shape of things today?

RichardBak wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 12:08 pm Sometimes I think the NFL's ultimate goal is having 16 teams finish 9-8 and the other 16 finish 8-9. Now there's your parity!

There's no way the league is gonna downsize. In fact, I think it's just a matter of time before we see a 4- or 8-team division/s in Europe. Maybe a decade or two off, but I believe it's headed that way. The regular season will also expand to 18, then 20 games. There'll be no preseason.

40 teams playing a 20-game schedule? There's a nice symmetry there. Again, probably won't happen in my lifetime, but I can see it. Hell, who back in 1955 or so, 12 teams playing a 12-game sked with a single title game, would imagine the size and shape of things today?

I agree them downsizing and getting rid of the franchises such as Jacksonville and Carolina isn't going to happen and it probably is only a matter of time until they increase the number of teams. If they ever try to go up to 40 though they then literally will be playing flag football because teams wouldn't be able to withstand any injuries at all. If someone got hurt they pretty much would be playing a practice squad guy.

If the NFL ever tried to expand into Europe though it would be an absolute failure. There is no way American Football will take off in Europe like it has here as Europe already has their sports. While sports participation is at an all-time high at the youth level football however is not. Participation in youth football has been declining for the past decade. No way is there going to be enough players to support even more NFL teams. If they try to what you will see is a lot of players currently playing in the XFL (or whatever they are calling it these days) will be on NFL rosters.

This thread reflects how alot of fans and observers feel ...

From Mike Florio today ... "The tin-foil hat crowd thinks the NFL wants the Chiefs to keep winning. Wouldnt it make more sense at this point for 345 Park Avenue to prefer the Bills?"

In the past, before rampant free agency, increasing salary caps and limited rookie contracts, people could embrace or follow the dominant team but with more parity, it shouldnt really happen today--the Patriots being the exception--yet here fans are, dreading a narrative that could produce the first three-peat champion, since the mid-1960s Packers.

What people forget about, is that there are other great teams, like the Ravens, Bills, 49ers--though a down year--Lions, but they cant seem to knock the king, off the hill. If the Chiefs get it done again, you cant blame them, they took advantage of their opportunities.

Citizen wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 8:30 amWhat's a bit disheartening is concluding, right or wrong, that the league doesn't mind fans questioning the integrity of the games as long as they're watching them (and the flood of commercials that pollute them). The open endorsement of sports betting by the networks does not come without the NFL's at least implicit approval. The money that flows to the NFL gets dirtier and dirtier, but as long as it's green enough to be spent, it's all good.

Yeah, this is it. The NFL -or any major league- priority one was "integrity of the game" and fighting even the most innocent thing to make sure everyone knew and/or believed everything was on the up and up. Chunk of that was avoiding gambling, obviously, but it's more than that now. And the leagues just don't care anymore about "protecting the shield." At least, not in the "our games are on the level" and fighting hard to assure everyone of that.

I'm not big on conspiracies and think it's sort of absurd to think it can so easily be 'fixed' -- and those that do think it's fixed, you'll get 100 different answers on the how/why it happens kind of proving the opposite true. But that's also the thing, when my parents, uncle, cousins, half my friends now immediately "it was rigged" and I say "well, Mahomes always gets that call" or "they obviously were going to call P.I. in that situation, they always do" and their response is just "exactly." And there's nothing really to say to that. The NFL doesn't care to defend it, and nonsensical conspiracies aside, there's nothing really to say in response when, "that happened." It's harder and harder to find a but other than, the best response I've had, at least this season was that I've known a player in the NFL since he was born, grew up street over from me, know his family and his integrity so I could respond to my family with "you think he would be involved in a fixed game?" and that works, to an extent. Otherwise, everything Citizen said.

Also, college football is very much the same and even a little more blatant in favoritism. Lot more "of course they got that call" (random example UGA/Bama/etc. v. SEC school that doesn't matter) happens there.

At least I still got HSFB. Sort of. Always liked my state that we basically had only 9 private schools and only half of them were the absurd recruiting type so the majority of classifications were just pure public school football play for where you grew up with your friends you grew up with, your town against the neighboring towns, find out who is better. Unfortunately the private schools recruit to an even more egregious level now and no one cares because "that's how HS football is" and worse, each area has a public school that operates in the de-facto private school way of recruiting all the best players from their respective area. Regular seasons are just a barrage of 60-0 games, long gone are local rivalries or a mix of towns having their couple years to shine before it's a different area school. Every classification, know either the one school that's going to win, last year, this year, next year and the five years after that, or there's a whole TWO schools that have a chance and you just wait all season to see what happens in the state championship. Still like watching the 3-6 v. 4-5 games for the variance of offenses, schemes, etc., but a lot else of what I loved about HSFB is gone. League championships and just making the state playoffs used to mean something, shoot, an honorable mention all-district used to be an accomplishment in a stacked district but even that, now 10 QBs are "first team" and 20 more are "second team," every individual gets a trophy, and the same handful of teams have all the best players and win every year the last decade plus.

Sad.

We all got football history, at least.

One thought I have is that when dynasties happen, or even when certain teams are great for a long time, the calls that go their way tend to get magnified.

Steelers in the 70s - that was my first experience with it. The Benny Barnes PI call in Super Bowl 13 and then the next year was the Renfro play. Two huge calls that COULD HAVE given the Steelers a much better chance to win. Not saying that the Oilers or Cowboys would have won without those calls but there certainly was a lot of "the refs are for the Steelers" talk.

Since then, the Lakers, Bulls, Yankees, Cowboys, and now KC, a lot of teams seem to get "all the calls." I don't know if that's true or not, or if it's a bit psychological with us fans in thinking that it happens because it might happen a few times their way in big moments. Not sure but it's common that dynasty teams have that rep.

GameBeforeTheMoney wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 7:46 pm One thought I have is that when dynasties happen, or even when certain teams are great for a long time, the calls that go their way tend to get magnified.

Steelers in the 70s - that was my first experience with it. The Benny Barnes PI call in Super Bowl 13 and then the next year was the Renfro play. Two huge calls that COULD HAVE given the Steelers a much better chance to win. Not saying that the Oilers or Cowboys would have won without those calls but there certainly was a lot of "the refs are for the Steelers" talk.

Since then, the Lakers, Bulls, Yankees, Cowboys, and now KC, a lot of teams seem to get "all the calls." I don't know if that's true or not, or if it's a bit psychological with us fans in thinking that it happens because it might happen a few times their way in big moments. Not sure but it's common that dynasty teams have that rep.

This is a good point. Just about all dynasty teams probably benefit from some blown call along the way, but at the same time It’s possible that other teams benefited from blown calls that are mostly forgotten by virtue of those teams being talked about less than dynasties.

I have been feeling like the OP has recently. My interest in modern NFL football has been waning over the last five years or so, especially after what happened in New Orleans in the 2018 NFC Title Game (that was a clear missed call because they wanted the Rams in the SB that year to reward them for moving to LA). If friends didn't have a SB party that year, I wouldn't have watched the game.

I didn't watch last year's SB, and I probably won't watch this one, either (I also didn't watch the KC-TB Super Bowl).

7DnBrnc53 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2025 12:00 am I have been feeling like the OP has recently. My interest in modern NFL football has been waning over the last five years or so, especially after what happened in New Orleans in the 2018 NFC Title Game (that was a clear missed call because they wanted the Rams in the SB that year to reward them for moving to LA). If friends didn't have a SB party that year, I wouldn't have watched the game.

I didn't watch last year's SB, and I probably won't watch this one, either (I also didn't watch the KC-TB Super Bowl).

My interest has waned since Peyton retired. Literally since he retired, every SB but Bengals/Rams has featured Brady or Mahomes

Yep, other than Foles and Stafford, its been just Brahomes ...