Tag: Dean

Perception is reality. And the reality is that, when it comes to the Chiefs, the NFL has a perception problem.

In post-truth America, people believe what they choose to believe. The harder anyone tries to change their minds, the deeper they dig in their heels.

It’s become a major talking point in recent weeks, given that the Chiefs have won a pair of playoff games that included questionable calls that went their way. Against the Texans in the divisional round, it was a pair of flags thrown for hits on Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. (Neither hit drew a fine from the league office.) Against the Bills, it was the critical fourth-down spot, fueled by a no-tech system that had two different spots by two different officials and the one favoring the Chiefs becoming the one that was adopted.

Chiefs fans balk at the effort to apply asterisks to their accomplishments. Others continue to insist the fix is in.

Here’s how bad it’s gotten. Fox rules analyst and former NFL senior V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino — the man for whom the current replay system was designed and developed — has an immediate family member who is among the tinfoil-hat crowd.

“My brother who is convinced that the league is rigged, that is convinced that I signed an NDA . . . when I left the league office that I cannot tell anybody that it’s rigged,” Blandino said in an appearance on SiriusXM Mad Dog Sports Radio. “We grew up in the same household, by the way. I said, ‘Listen, there’s no conspiracy. The officials — there’s too many variables, there’s too much going on. To me, it’s the hardest sport. When you think about football, with seven different officials, to say, ‘OK, I’m gonna rig this game’ or ‘the game is rigged from the league office down.’ The officials are just trying to get it right.”

And he’s right. When in doubt, incompetence supersedes conspiracy. And the league isn’t nearly competent enough to launch, maintain, and conceal a conspiracy.

That doesn’t stop people, including Blandino’s brother, from believing otherwise. And that belief is fueled by preventable mistakes, outdated methods, and a complete lack of transparency when it’s time to venture behind the curtain and make critical decisions.

In Blandino’s role with the UFL, transparency has been embraced in the replay function. Opening the windows to the football-watching world helps folks see the sausage-making process. To understand why decisions are made. And to not let their minds wander toward fanciful notions that somebody is trying to engineer outcomes.

For the NFL, it’s a combination of factors — not the least of which is the lack of full-time officials. Throw in the ongoing proliferation of legalized gambling, and the void of information from the league becomes the Petri dish in which the primordial ooze is batshit-craziness

Remember what Commissioner Roger Goodell said in 2012, when the NFL still hated the legalization of gambling? “If gambling is permitted freely on sporting events, normal incidents of the game such as bad snaps, dropped passes, turnovers, penalties, and play calling inevitably will fuel speculation, distrust, and accusations of point-shaving or game-fixing,” Goodell said.

Although the league, when faced with those words a year ago, downplayed any uptick in speculation, distrust, and accusations of game-fixing more than five years into the Wild West of BET! BET! BET!, it has more recently reached a fever pitch as it relates to the Chiefs.

But there’s a way to fix it. Let the sunshine in. Embrace technology. And spend the money to make all officials full-time employees who don’t spend all of football season working two jobs and getting little if any time to rest, recover, and recharge.

Until the league takes action, the atmosphere exists for people to believe officials are steered toward certain outcomes. And, in turn, people like Blandino’s brothers believe it.

The league can choose to shrug it off as kooky talk. Or it can do what’s needed to be done to uncook the kookiness.