Earlier, by Steve Sailer: Do NFL Coaches Only Have Their Jobs Due To White Privilege?
Steve Sailer mentions in his coaching post that
recently fired black coach of the Miami Dolphins, Brian Flores, alleg[ed] various scandals such as Miami owner Stephen Ross offering him $100,000 per loss in 2019 in order to get a top draft pick. Flores says the owner didn’t like him for rejecting his offer.
Teams pick in reverse order of their record to improve bad teams. The NBA instituted a lottery in 1985 to discourage teams from intentionally losing to get Patrick Ewing, but the NFL doesn’t have a lottery.
Of course this is important if true, as in a crime, not just a scandal.
Brian Flores has been adamantly saying for 2 straight days that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered him 100k per loss in 2019. How is this not the biggest sports story of the year? Is @nflcommish alive?https://t.co/5DOb8Gwjr7
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) February 3, 2022
Of course, this kind of behavior has been rumored for many years.
Here's a quote from the 1972 comic bestseller Semi-Tough, by the late Dan Jenkins. Billy Clyde Puckett, a white running back who plays for the Giants, is speaking
One of the slickest moves the Mastrioni brothers made four years ago was getting the dog-ass Jets to lose their last five games so they could finish last in the whole NFL and be allowed to draft Dreamer Tatum [A black defensive back, played by Carl Weathers in the movie].
In case nobody knows it, the last-place team gets the first draft pick. I heard a story that the dog-ass Jets celebrated their final loss to the Patriots in Shea Stadium by carrying their quarterback, Boyce Cayce, off the field because he had thrown four interceptions for touchdowns.
“This is a great bunch of guys,” the papers quoted [Coach] Rudi Tambunga. “I’m proud to be associated with a bunch that wants the first-round draft pick as much as the management does.”
DeadSpin, in a post called Is tanking illegal? Brian Flores suit brings attention to legal gray area in legalized-betting era, points to some of the reasons this may be actually illegal:
Tanking, they say, has
rarely been explicitly addressed in the modern-day NFL outside of conspiracy theories. Until now.
Do me a favor and picture this: Some random wealthy guy approaches Flores on the street and offers him $100K to lose his next game. Random Wealthy Guy doesn’t have a vested interest in the Dolphins’ draft position, but given that Flores agrees, this man does now have the knowledge that will allow him to bet against the Dolphins or tell his friends to bet against the Dolphins with relative certainty. In this case, Flores and the random guy, under a federal law known as the Sports Bribery Act, would both be implicated in making money by fixing a professional game. The statute threatens fine or imprisonment for “whoever carries into effect, attempts to carry into effect, or conspires with any other person to carry into effect any scheme in commerce to influence, in any way, by bribery any sporting contest, with knowledge that the purpose of such scheme is to influence by bribery that contest.” The act has been used sparingly since its introduction, and has largely been applied to cases involving either college athletics or horse racing.
NFL games involve a lot of money, especially now that sports betting is happening legally. The FBI would be better employed investigating this than much of what they're wasting their time with.
