A while back I responded to a post asking this question. Here is the original post:
is every sport rigged honestly or ..... 
are bookmakers just that good.
they hit that wager right on the money.its like they know exactly what is going on.why arent these guys betting.
the over under was way off though congrats on the under backers.
thank god i bought 3 points and hit that wager.
This post garnered a lot of responses from people that lost money on a Cowboys game. My initial response was no. I had recently read "Beat the Sports Books" by Dan Gordon who had dedicated several pages to this topic. He reasoned that it would be too expensive to bribe players and that the screening of NFL referees was so rigorous that this would be an unlikely source as well.
Many responses to this thread made fun and responded "somebody must have lost some money". I believe the assesment was correct and it took some credibility away from the whole discussion, but I never forgot it.
I recently read the book "Personal Foul" by the infamous former NBA ref Tim Donoughy and have come to the conclusion that Dan Gordon was dead wrong. I have another book on the way called "The Fix is In" and both books protest that it is the motivations of the league itself to influence these games.
T.D. talked about how the NBA bigshots had an unspoken rule - don't send the star players to the bench. He talked about how refs would have a vendetta against certain players or coaches, or a cozy relationship... ...and that this would influence how the game would be called. The ad I read for "The Fix is In" referred to how professional sports would see to it that certain storylines would emerge because they would make more money. It named 3:
- The Patriots winning the Superbowl after 9-11
- The Saints winning the Superbowl after Hurricane Katrina
- Dale Earnhart Jr. winning the Daytona 500 after the death of his legendary father
These are all great storylines. The book brings into question why the same teams seem to make the playoffs year after year.
Tim Donoughy made his picks almost exclusively on knowing who the referees were for the game and what biases that had for the players and coaches participating. His results were 70% to 80% accurate. Only a fool would believe that this is exclusive to the NBA.
It only takes one play to change the momentum of a game. I have seen pass intereference calls change the tide of a game.
There is no question in my mind that similar activities are occuring in the NFL. I am not bringing this up to cry over spilled milk. I bring it up because I believe if someone is savvy enough to recognize the desired storyline, or the personal vendettas, or any other influence that would be cause to call a game unfairly that it can be exploited.
Tim Donoughy had inside information. He was the Gordon Gekko of the NBA. After reading his book I don't think you had to be a referee to see what was happening. You simply had to be looking in the right place. In the past I have spent time studying injury reports, weather, coaching tendencies, but it never dawned on me to track the referees.
It would take years of research just to get an idea of what the referee tendencies are, but if the games are rigged, be it the mob, ref bias, or the league itself, the referees are the ones to watch. They are paid far less then the players and they have the power to shift the tide of a game with their calls. ...just a thought.
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Originally Posted by bulichm
