The Fix is In ... Or Not

Hola decent and honest folks out there! So, over the last week or so we have all had the chance to witness three of the most corrupt things in the sports world one right after the other. Well, three things sports fans are all convinced are fixed. We had the NBA Draft Lottery (and the NBA playoffs), Horse Racing (Triple Crown contender doesn’t run at Belmont) and Boxing (Manny Pacquaio v Tim Bradley).

Okay, so the NBA Draft Lottery has been alleged to be fixed ever since the NY Knicks mysteriously snagged the #1 overall pick in 1985 and got the rights to Patrick Ewing. It was a very fortuitous turn of events for the Knicks. And that seems to have continued right up to present day as the last two years have gone exactly the way you would expect them to go if the Draft Lottery was fixed.

The way the Draft Lottery works is every team that didn’t make the playoffs gets a certain number of ping pong balls depending on where they finish the season in the rankings. So, the worst team gets the most ping pong balls and a statistical advantage. But, since they do the drawing of the ping pong balls in private, it appears that the NBA is just find with the whole “it’s fixed” conspiracy thing, so I’ll let them enjoy it and say that YES, THE NBA DRAFT LOTTERY IS FIXED.

Next we had The Belmont. A few years ago, a coworker of mine decided to spend his 21st birthday down at Hot Springs, AR so he could go to the horse races. When he got back I asked him if he had fun and he looked at me and said “Yeah, but it was a little strange.” “Oh really?” I replied. “It actually seemed like the jockey was pulling up when his horse was in the lead and about to win. I couldn’t figure out why.”

Fascinating huh? I always love it when young, sheltered people are exposed to the realities of the world. The only institutions in this country more corrupt than Horse Racing are Boxing and Congress. But, let’s remember that “I’ll Have Another” didn’t run at Belmont. That’s because it wasn’t about fixing the race as much as it was about pure GREED! Oh, I’m sorry, it was about preserving I’ll Have Another’s value in the stud horse market. If he ran and lost, his value as a stud would have fallen way too much to make it worth it to risk running. So, someone kicked the horse in the shin and said “Damn, he’s hurt. I guess he can’t go this weekend.”

And finally we’ve got the Pacquaio/Bradley fight. Once Pac-Man finally took the ring, and he made us all wait for quite a while, he beat young Mr. Bradley like a rented mule for at least the first half of the fight and then coasted home to what seemed like a very easy victory. Well, it seemed that way to all the honest folks around. Turns out the judges were watching a different fight and gave the win to Bradley on a split decision.

Well immediately everyone started in with the “IT WAS FIXED!” conspiracies. And I admit that my first reaction was the same. But, after thinking about it I realized that we’re leaving something out. We’re not accounting for something that is every bit as American as fixing things and greed. That’s right kids we might just have a case of good old fashioned incompetence. The judges might just suck.

I think we often times scream that things are “fixed” when they don’t go the way we think they should, or the way they obviously should because we actually prefer that to greed and incompetence. Fixing a sporting event (or election or game show or reality competition etc) actually takes skill and smarts. And, with that whole American Exceptionalism thing we have going, we just prefer to pretend that even when something is wrong or corrupt, at least it took some good old fashioned American Knowhow and hard work to get it done.

Jayman
Jayman3768@gmail.com
@Jayman_IWS