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There’s no pro-Chiefs conspiracy in the NFL, but there is a bigger problem

This unholy alliance that so many institutions — the NFL, MLB, the NBA, the NHL, the NCAA — have forged with legalized gambling is now routinely jeopardizing the integrity of these sports.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell addressed reporters before media day at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans on Monday.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell addressed reporters before media day at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans on Monday.Read moreMatt York / AP

NEW ORLEANS — If the NFL does nothing else, it demands that those who follow it and cover it and love it and lose hours of sleep over it hold a few contradictory thoughts in their heads at once.

We can admire the physical toughness and bravery of the players while criticizing them whenever they deliver subpar performances. We can complain about the ways in which a consortium of billionaires takes the sport’s fans for granted in a never-ending chase for additional revenue streams, and we can keep watching in record numbers. And we can listen to Roger Goodell call out all the conspiracy theorists who think the NFL and its officials want the Kansas City Chiefs to win every game they play, and we also can acknowledge that all the major North American sports have thrown themselves headlong into a credibility crisis.

Goodell, the NFL’s commissioner, held a news conference here Monday afternoon at the Caesars Superdome, one of the rare occasions when he opens himself up to some questions that aren’t preapproved or massaged to the point of obsequiousness. Sure enough, the narrative that’s so popular these days — that Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs have the refs wrapped around their fingers and that the deck is stacked against any of their opponents, including the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX — came up more than once.

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“It reminds me a little bit of the script, that I write a script and I have the script for the entire season,” Goodell said. “I think a lot of those theories are things that happen in social media. They get a new life. It’s not your theory, but it’s out there. Nobody wants it to be their theory. I understand that. It reflects a lot of fans’ passion, and it’s a reminder for us how important officiating is. The men and women who officiate in the NFL are outstanding. They have the highest possible standards.

“It’s a ridiculous theory for anyone who might take it seriously. But at the end of the day, it’s something we always have to continue to work on. How do we make our officiating better at all times?”

Goodell is right, of course, in his assertion that the Chiefs, and Mahomes in particular, don’t receive some kind of favorable treatment from officials. Is there a general tendency within the league to throw roughing-the-passer flags on hits that are clean, that don’t deserve to be penalized? Of course. The protecting of quarterbacks has at times gone too far. But the highest-profile examples of that trend — Troy Aikman’s outrage over it during the Chiefs’ divisional-round victory over the Houston Texans, for instance — don’t necessarily add up to a full-blown push to keep the Chiefs’ championship hopes alive.

As the Washington Post recently noted, seven quarterbacks drew roughing-the-passer and unnecessary-roughness penalties this season at a higher rate than Mahomes did, and he ranked 29th in 2023. Preemptively claiming that the refs are biased or retroactively blaming them for a loss is nothing more than a loser’s lament, a convenient rationalization, and if the Chiefs win Sunday, any Eagles fans who cite the officiating as the reason for the outcome will be falling into that same trap of whiny excuse-making.

OK. Deep breath. Disparate thought coming …

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During Goodell’s presser, news broke that Major League Baseball had fired an umpire, Pat Hoberg, because Hoberg had shared several sports betting accounts with a professional poker player who had bet on baseball. Eight times, that poker player had bet on games that Hobert officiated, either on the field or as a replay overseer, and though MLB said in a press release that it had found no evidence that Hoberg had influenced the outcome of any games through his umpiring, he was gone just the same.

This unholy alliance that so many institutions — the NFL, MLB, the NBA, the NHL, the NCAA — have forged with legalized gambling is now routinely jeopardizing the integrity of these sports. It’s not a leaguewide conspiracy, like those who think the NFL has it out for any franchise that doesn’t have a direct connection to Taylor Swift allege, and no one asked Goodell about it on Monday. But it’s a huge problem nonetheless, a much more pressing and destructive matter than anything involving Mahomes and presumably grassy knolls and chemtrails in the sky. Put aside the ridiculous. Stick to the real. It’s possible to do both.