Skip Bayless Claims 2001-2002 Season New England-Oakland Playoff Game Was Fixed by NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue
December 8, 2009 by dwil
The following conversation took place this morning during the second down portion of 1st and 10, a group of debate segments aired daily on the ESPN morning show, First Take. Jay Crawford (JC) is the moderator. The debaters are former Oakland Raiders fullback Jon Ritchie (JR) and segment regular Skip Bayless (SB):
JC: Skip, is basketball the easiest game to fix?
SB: Basketball is easily, the easiest game to fix. Now let me turn the tables and ask John [Ritchie, former NFL fullback], former NFL player, did you ever participate in a pro football game in which you suspected that the outcome has somehow been manipulated?
JR: (Laughs and looks at moderator Jay Crawford…)
JC: That’s tricky territory. It’s a loaded question but answer as honestly as you can.
JR: I, uh, absolutely felt as though,uh, we were eliminated from the playoffs not because of our own doing but because a call went the other way. The call was properly made, uh, my offensive huddle was
JC: Made on the field….
JR: We were on the field ready to play andsat there for what seemed like minute after minute – what is the hold up here? Why don’t we just go win the game? We’re gonna run the clock out. And, uh, for what ever reason -
SB: The game was over.
JR: (Nods head, yes) The review was lasting and lasting and lasting. It came back and it was incredu- we were incredulous, amazed at the fact that they [the New England Patriots] were getting the ball back. It seemed impossible. And then of course, we always felt in Oakland as though everyone was kind of up in arms against us; the folks at league headquarters.
JC: Why? Was it the white horse against the dark horse kind of thing with Tom Brady?
JR: We thought maybe there some, well — yes some of that. But there was a bias against the Raiders and there were some who felt like hey this was 2001. We just had this national catastrophe in 9/11 and it’s a great thing to have a red, white, and blue team — you know there – it got that extreme.
JC: Do you believe – I mean those are conspiracy theories…
JR: …other than the referees who were being truthful and honest – do I believe that?
JC: Do you believe those — do you believe that in their hearts they made the call that they felt was right?
JR: Ahhh ——— the referees?
JC: Yeah.
JR: I believe they knew that we should have won that game. I believe that someone else dictated that that call go the other way.
JC: Wow.
SB: Okay lemme back him up. I was at that game in the press box I was working in the Bay Area at the time. And you can dismiss this as classic Raider Al Davis paranoia but Al later told me that he had it on good authority that the league commissioner, then commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, actually participated via phone from New York during the replay review which did go on suspiciously long. I don’t remember what the exact —– it was like four or five minutes. It was excessively long to the point I was dumbfounded by call. I think you [Ritchie and the Raiders] got absolutely robbed. And league officials spent the next week lecturing reporters about how the rule book said something that I don’t think it said at all. They tried to rewrite the tuck rule by saying that once you tuck (brings arm forward in a throwing motion to tucking the ball), I’m sorry, once you pump and bring the ball back to the set position you can’t fumble. That’s not what I think that the rule book says.
JC: Wow!
JR: Yeah.
SB: The rule book says that if you start to throw and you think twice about it and you try to bring the ball back down and you lose control of the ball it’s not a fumble it’s just an incomplete pass. That’s the tuck rule. Tom Brady had finished tucking. He has successfully thought twice, brought the ball back down cause he almost threw it cause he went back to set position. He had finished — and it was a fumble! It was a strip fumble. The game is o-ver. There is no question the game is going to be over if it’s called.
JC: And NFL history rewritten.
SB: You got that right.
JC: Wow! All right. That’s it for a very heavy second down.
Earlier in the morning Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic of the Mike and Mike in the Morning radio-television simulcast were chastising listeners and viewers who averred that they felt NFL and NBA games were fixed. The host pair went on about players making millions of dollar and people go to prison for game fixing, so why would anyone do such a thing – athletes or game officials. One e-mailer told Golic “stop being a jerk” an went on to say he was naive for thinking that games weren’t fixed. Golic became irate and challenged the e-mailer or anyone to explain how games could be fixed. Greenberg joined in with Golic to berate the person who e-mailed the pair. Greenberg said that, in explanation the e-mailer will say it’s “them” who fix games, that the e-mailer would fail to provide an explanation containing substantive information, that: “You know what he’ll say! He’ll say it’s THEM!” That’s what he’ll do!”
I wrote the pair an e-mail concisely explaining how NBA and MLB games are fixed. I part it read:
Game totals are more easily manipulated than are point spreads. In the NBA when referees call fouls, points are scored while the clock stops. To make a game go over the combined point total for a game as given by Las Vegas a referee need only call an inordinate amount of fouls forcing the clock to stop and for free throws to be shot and made. Conversely, if fewer than normal fouls are called, the clock will run and fewer points are scored.
In MLB a too tight strike zone favors hitters and will cause more runs to be scored. an expanded strike zone favors pitchers and fewer runs will be scored.
The logic here is so simple that it is nearly beautiful in its simplicity. You [Greenberg and Golic] will probably not read this e-mail because it makes too much sense and easily refutes your claims that games are, indeed, not fixed.
Little did the pair know that a little more than one hour later a former football player and former reporter would claim an NFL playoff game was fixed and tell in detail how it was fixed.
dwil,
Remember Stevin ” Headache ” Smith? He was the point man for the point shaving scandal at Arizona State earlier this decade. Here is the transcript from Outside The Lines regarding that case. Check out who one of the moderators was.
http://espn.go.com/page2/tvlistings/show105transcript.html
It’s interesting that this happened. Wonder if there will be a fallout.
Everyone check this video out. I think you will like this Dwil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utO9jtDpsmQ
des-
The difference is, that was NCAA Hoops not the NBA. Greenberg’s ire was directed at the “conspiracy theorists” who believe pro sports are fixed
O-
I’ve seen this. Thanks for linking folks to it.
Big Man-
My thought exactly. Will Crawford and/or Bayless concoct some sort of bailout statements or a mea culpa.
D-
Did you see Donaghy on 60 Minutes on Sunday? Just watching that show made me think that the NBA, the feds, and Donaghy came to some agreement where Donaghy would take the blame for being the only NBA official to bet on games so folks wouldn’t question the validity of the NBA. I remember Stern going out of his way to say that Donaghy was a lone rouge ref. Yet, Donaghy used to call another ref and only talk to him for 15 seconds before a game. No way can I believe that some games in the NBA are fixed. Donaghy wanted to say that he bet the spread, fine. I also don’t totally buy him saying that he only won on games that he reffed, considering he knew all of those relationships and knew who was working games on certain nights.
Kos-
I’m writing on Donaghy’s appearance. There is something under the surface I’m gong to deal with…. and Foster’s (the ref you speak of) part of it.
True Kos……….I believe an agreement was made. Remember when he went in the mob actually tried to kill him.
@Dwil – thanks man I wasn’t sure if you had seen that before. I know you hipped me to that kat before when it came to his book.
Dude said that 26 of the 30 (then) owners had gambling and mob ties….shit doesn’t surprise me.
Yeah Skip and crawford are going to have to pay for that…………..but since everyone is so worried about Tiger sticking his tally wagger in the latest hoochiefied mud duck, this will probably fly under the radar.
Also it always surprised me how folks always thought that NBA games were fixed but not the NFL.
I have always thought that refs and coaches especially were in on the fixes in the NFL.
How many times have we seen a coach abandon the run even though they can’t be stopped running the ball. Or a coach call a pass on 3rd and inches….only for it to fall incomplete.
Or the ref close their eyes to holding all the way down the field. Only to call holding to take the same team out of field goal range. Even the game this weekend in ATL it looked like the refs in the first half were doing everything to stop the Falcons from getting blown out.
Hell even Chris Redman was getting the golden boy treatment with roughing the passer hits.
As for that Pats vs Raiders game I always said that the refs stole that game. And I felt that the refs and mike martz threw the superbowl versus the pats.
i noticed on 1st and ten. when the other debator is a pro athlete. the very confrontational skip bayliss kisses their ass every way possible.
former raider :”you guys were robbed.”
chad 85: “did i call you a distraction? i said you are a breath of fresh air in a stifled league.”
cowboy linebacker: “you guys are going to the super bowl.”
I’m quite surprised someone such as Bayless would actually come out and say that on ESPiNners. I thought the same thing during the actual play and review. Heck, when the refs were going beyond the usual timeframe of review, I basically said “go ahead, since that’s probably the plan.” Maybe I was biased (don’t ship me off to GITMO…;}), but I was Raiders all through that game for football as well as politics. I didn’t fall off the turnip truck and not know 9/11 happened a few months prior and, just so happens, the Pats were in the playoffs.
I guess one valuble lesson I learned when I was a kid involved a Bears playoff loss to the ‘Skins. It was Walter’s last game and the camera panned over to him and his head was in his hands. I about teared up trying to watch the rest of the game. Heading out with the parents after the game for some ice cream, they noticed my depressed look and basically said, “son, they GET PAID to play…while you get NOTHING!”
To expand on Origin – ‘. And I felt that the refs and mike martz threw the superbowl versus the pats.’
Tagliabue must’ve called down to Martz in that game at halftime, I can think of no other reason to stop running the NFL MVP (or offensive player of the year, Faulk and Warner traded those back and forth for 3 yrs) in the second half. Faulk was averaging about 7 yds a carry in the first half, and had like two or three carries in the second?
And then a few years later against the Chargers in the playoffs, somehow Belichek convinced Cam Cameron to stop running the NFL MVP in the second half, coincedentally averaging arout 7 yds a carry in the first….
Conspiracy! League had its hand in it, and before I thought it was Belichekian Jedi mind tricks…
“Tagliabue must’ve called down to Martz in that game at halftime, I can think of no other reason to stop running the NFL MVP (or offensive player of the year, Faulk and Warner traded those back and forth for 3 yrs) in the second half. Faulk was averaging about 7 yds a carry in the first half, and had like two or three carries in the second?”
Exactly GMP thats what I was refering to.