PREFACE: Sorry for publishing this post rather late. I started it the week after Super Bowl LVIII ended, but got distracted with other things. I hope everyone enjoys reading this post.
Well, another NFL season has come to a close and the Kansas City Chiefs repeat as Super Bowl champions.
I would say “congratulations” to the team and to Chiefs fans, but considering the fact that my blog sadly doesn’t have many followers, any congratulations I offer will likely go unnoticed and unheeded.
Then again, I think offering my congratulations to a team whose members I will never meet and to fans who are only living vicariously through the accomplishments of their favorite team is an empty gesture.
The fact is that the Chiefs “victory” over the San Francisco 49ers should be a surprise to no one.
I’ve written posts on this blog where I point out that the NFL and all professional sports script the outcomes of their games just as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) does. This fact is often met with incredulity by fans because most people think it impossible that a sports league as popular as the NFL could script the outcomes of its games and this fact not come out.
I have to give credit to Mr. Brian Tuohey of the website TheFixIsIn.net, whose work I often reference when writing about or discussing the scripted nature of the NFL in particular and sports in general. His 15+ years of work on this topic is often imitated, but can never truly be duplicated.
I doubt he will ever read this post, but I am obligated to give credit where credit is due.
That said…
People need the illusion that the outcomes of NFL games are the product of honest competition on the field. Many think (correctly) that NFL officials alter the outcomes of games with their timely (or untimely) and erroneous calls. Of course, I’ve yet to see an NFL official who made a blatantly obvious and erroneous call that altered the outcome of a game get fired for incompetence.
Talk about things that should make you go, hmmm.
The NFL’s heavy reliance on “storylines,” the definition of that word being “the plot of a book, story, or film,” cannot possibly be anything but a rather blatant tell that the league provides scripted entertainment with predetermined and often predictable outcomes rather than honest sports competition.
The NFL loves its storylines and no storyline during the 2023 season was bigger than the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce romance. This storyline generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the league (over $330 million during the regular season alone) and made Super Bowl LVIII the most watched television program in history.
Yes. In history.
Of course, if you look up the most watched television broadcasts in history on the Internet, most of the results that come up are past Super Bowls.
Duh.
Of the estimated 123,000,000 people who watched Super Bowl LVIII during its live television broadcast, almost half of that audience (47.5%) were women.
This is hardly surprising and is exactly what the powers that be that run the NFL wanted and meticulously planned for.
How?
Just let the Chiefs and their Taylor Swift followers get to and win the Super Bowl.
There is a growing realization that the NFL is a scripted league. I made the cardinal mistake of constantly pointing this out to my friends and family whenever NFL discussions came up in person or on social media. Of course, expressing such “conspiracy theories” is always met with skepticism and sometimes derision.
There are a couple of quotes that come to mind whenever the subject of “the scripted NFL” comes up. The first is a quote often questionably attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
The second quote is:
“There is no coincidence, everything is part of a plan.”
-Ambreen Nadeem
The NFL’s plan for the 2023 season was executed brilliantly.
From the perspective of the average fan, who ostensibly still thinks the league is not scripted entertainment, the Chiefs repeating as champions is a bit of a surprise. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes had a hard time connecting with his receivers almost all season and the Chiefs were amongst the worst teams in the league defending against the run.
The Chiefs had to get to the Super Bowl going up against the toughest teams in the league during the playoffs, and as the third seeded team in the American Football Conference (AFC), had to do so mostly on the road.
The AFC Championship Game against the Baltimore Ravens, led by the now two-time league MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson, seemed to be an insurmountable challenge for the Chiefs. I know most of NFL fandom, especially betters and Baltimore Ravens fans, had the Ravens winning handily and going to the Super Bowl.
Fans were shocked the Ravens, who led the league in rushing yards and rushing attempts, failed to exploit the Chiefs’ wretched run defense, only opting to run the ball six times the entire game despite only being down by one score for much of game. I was not surprised by this development in the least. The Ravens’ game plan certainly gave the Chiefs the best chance to win. But I digress…
There was a “Super Bowl logo” conspiracy theory propagated all season on social media that the NFL “gave away” the Super Bowl matchup and the outcome of the game in advance through the colors of the logo:
According to this theory, the team represented by the dominant color in the logo would lose the Super Bowl and the team with the less prominent color in the logo would win.
There was some validity to this theory since prior to Super Bowl LVIII, the Eagles (green) lost to the Chiefs (red) in Super Bowl LVII and the Bengals (orange) lost to the Rams (yellow) in Super Bowl LVI. This theory went viral this season as many people thought that the Super Bowl LVIII matchup would be between the Ravens (purple) vs. the 49ers (red) with the Ravens losing the game.
Obviously only the 49ers side of this matchup actually made it to the big game though they lost to the Chiefs. Not-so-ironically perhaps, both teams’ colors are primarily red, the less prominent color in the Super Bowl LVIII logo.
If the 49ers and Ravens had been the teams that met in Super Bowl LVIII, it would have been very difficult to dismiss the “conspiracy theory” that the NFL is scripted. Of course, this viral theory was a boon for sports books since many NFL bettors wagered lots of money from the beginning of the season that this would be the Super Bowl matchup. This is called futures betting. You can learn more about futures betting at the link below:
https://www.thelines.com/betting/futures/
Looking at the business side of the NFL often illuminates the showbiz nature of the league as well as other sports leagues. The heavy influence and pressure exerted by the league’s media partners that forces the NFL to deliver ratings drives a lot of the scripting to ensure big ratings every season. The salary cap is based on the ever-increasing revenue generated through broadcast rights.
The NFL and other sports leagues, including the NCAA, can’t exist as the massive revenue-generating entities that they are without the media companies funding them and providing media coverage.
Media companies make their money by selling ad space to corporate advertisers. Advertisers agree to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to the media companies to reach the largest audiences consisting of the right key demographic mix.
In the case of television, most key demographics are amongst adults aged 18-54. A key demographic for reality television shows are women aged 18-34, which is not-so-ironically the same age range as men who watch sports.
What is a bigger reality television show than live sports?
As the aforementioned Brian Tuohey often points out, the validity of “coincidences” in endeavors where millions, if not billions, of dollars are at stake should be questioned or at least not always taken on face value.
It’s not as if the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl with Taylor Swift, the biggest and hottest pop singer on earth right now, dating a Chiefs player in Travis Kelce, who was featured in several prominent ad campaigns this past season, is some sort of freak coincidence.
Do you think the Washington Commanders or New England Patriots would have won the Super Bowl this season if Swift were dating a player on one of those teams?
Remember..,
Ratings = Money
The reality is that the Swift/Kelce storyline was a ratings and revenue generator. It pulled in a key demographic that the NFL has been actively trying to attract for years now., women aged 18-34, and…
The storyline worked, and that’s the bottom line.
I’m still a fan of NFL football and will root for my Dallas Cowboys as I have my whole life, but I emotionally divested myself from the notion that sports is pure competition years ago and I am much better off for it.
I enjoy the NFL and sports for what they are (entertainment) and not for what I thought it was for many years (pure competition).
I’ve never felt more liberated…
-The Rational Ram
The Rational Ram 