TANKING IS A SPORTS DISEASE, SO PURGE THE OWNERS WHO URGE IT

The NFL and other leagues can’t exist if they aren’t believable, meaning Roger Goodell should be prepared to ban two owners accused of offering payments to coaches to intentionally lose games

     If the games aren’t real, why watch? If owners strive to tank seasons and compromise the integrity of a sport, why would millions of people bet billions of dollars on so much phony stench? Why not just wager on which pigeon eats the first crouton in the park, and, heavens to Balenciaga, why buy any pricey clothing item that features a team’s colors and logos?

     Nothing should make a sports enthusiast want to hurl more than the concept of intentionally trying to lose. It’s an assault on your intelligence as a human being, a waste of your energy and time and money. Basically, you are staring into a used toilet for your entertainment. You have no life, dude, because you are being held captive by crooks.

     Which is why we should be forever indebted to Brian Flores. Even if he loses his racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL, even if he’s exiled as the Black coach who dared to challenge an almighty league, at least he aimed a flashlight at the darkest corner of the industry. He is accusing the 81-year-old owner of the Miami Dolphins, a prominent American real estate mogul named Stephen Ross, of incentivizing him to throw games by offering him $100,000 for every loss during the 2019 season.

     “That was a conversation about not doing as much as we needed to do in order to win football games. Take a flight, go on vacation, I'll give you $100,000 per loss — those were his exact words,’’ Flores told ESPN on his Take Down The NFL tour of network studios, explaining why his three-year Dolphins tenure ended in a firing last month. “I deal in truth, I tell the players this, as well. I'm gonna give you good news, bad news — but it's going to be honest. To disrespect the game like that, trust was lost, and there were certainly some strained relationships, and ultimately, I think that was my demise in Miami.’’

    In turn, Flores’ claim led Hue Jackson to make similar pay-to-tank accusations against Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam. Drivers on interstate highways might be familiar with Haslam’s Pilot Flying J truck stops, a family business convicted of fraud for bilking trucking companies out of rebates. Jackson said he was paid bonus money for cooperating with ownership’s four-year plan to throw seasons, including 31 losses in 32 games in 2016 and 2017. Haslam wanted teams filled with untested young players who came cheaply and lost enough to enable top draft picks, which the Browns used for Myles Garrett and Baker Mayfield. Jackson preferred devoting the money to better players, which never happened until he was fired midway through the 2019 season.

     “I wasn't offered $100,000 for every game, but there was a substantial amount of money made within what happened in this situation every year at the end of it,’’ Jackson told ESPN. “And I remember very candidly saying to Jimmy, ‘I’m not interested in bonus money,’ because I've never known that to be a bonus. I was interested in taking whatever that money was and putting it toward getting more players on our football team because I didn't think we were very talented at all. I know what good football teams look like, play like, what they act like and we didn't have a lot of talented players on the team at that time.’’

     If a shred of these allegations is true, the NFL must ban both owners and hand them off to the authorities. The league cannot dive head-first into a legal gambling culture and accept massive payoffs in long-term deals with sportsbooks without incurring, well, the biggest scandal in sports history. We’re talking full-scale rioting by bettors, 10 million of whom are of the problem variety in America, and class-action lawsuits from their attorneys. Commissioner Roger Goodell must make this his first priority, immediately, while acknowledging that violations of the Sports Bribery Act could send Ross and Haslam to prison.

     The language in the statute: “Whoever carries into effect, attempts to carry into effect, or conspires with any other person to carry into effect any scheme in commence to influence, in any way, by bribery any sporting contest, with knowledge of the purpose of such scheme is to influence by bribery that contests, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”

     But remember what we’re dealing with in the NFL. This is a league controlled by men with enormous fortunes and business egos, tycoons who aren’t inclined to confess to sins. Nor has Goodell, as a servant for owners who paid him $128 million the past two fiscal years, shown any recent willingness to risk their favor. Even when the New England Patriots were caught in scandals — Spygate, Deflategate — Goodell didn’t throw the book at the culprits. Bill Belichick was docked $500,000 and a first-round draft pick for spying. Tom Brady, for shrinking footballs, was suspended four games while the team was fined $1 million and forced to relinquish first- and fourth-round picks. A case could have been made for season-long suspensions and colossal fines in both cases, but Goodell knows he could push the uber-influential owner, Bob Kraft, only so far.

     It will require relentless public pressure, then, for Goodell to do more than investigate the tanking accusations — which he has yet to confirm publicly. His league would be dreck without integrity and credibility, but as long as 10 more years of media fortunes are flowing though the NFL coffers, the commissioner has little interest in banning owners as he drops hints of leaving his position sooner than later.

     Instead, he’ll let the accused owners point fingers at the accusing coaches, portraying them as disgruntled ex-employees telling fantastic lies. “Completely fabricated,’’ the Browns said of Jackson’s claims in a statement, “… any accusation that any member of our organization was incentivized to deliberately lose games is categorically false.’’

     Said Ross: “With regards to the allegations being made by Brian Flores, I am a man of honor and integrity and cannot let them stand without responding. I take great personal exception to these malicious attacks, and the truth must be known. His allegations are false, malicious and defamatory. We understand there are media reports stating that the NFL intends to investigate his claims, and we will cooperate fully. I welcome that investigation and I am eager to defend my personal integrity, and the integrity and values of the entire Miami Dolphins organization, from these baseless, unfair and disparaging claims."

     Call them whistleblowers, if you’d like. But in a world populated by growing numbers of scoundrels, we should be listening more closely to those with proximity to inside dirt. By coming forward, both accusers have killed any future chances of working in the NFL, with Jackson now in the peripheral college ranks at Grambling. Said Flores, only 40 and coming off back-to-back winning seasons in Miami: “I may be risking coaching the game that I love and that has done so much for my family and me.’’ Their courage in speaking up is reason alone to hear them out.

     Until now, tanking has been a grudgingly accepted detriment to 21st-century sports, a practice that helped the Chicago Cubs break a 108-year championship curse and the Houston Astros cheat their way to a World Series title. The NBA has turned tanking into an everyday art form, under the guise of designed rest for superstars and a multi-year process that isn’t working out in Philadelphia. The fans have grumbled, but they haven’t boycotted and continue to spend money and watch events.

     But the specter of incentivized NFL tanking should elicit an angrier public response. Unlike the other leagues, there are only 17 regular-season games before a handful of postseason games, all wrapped around the thrills and pitfalls of gambling. Based on the whopping increases in viewing audiences, America is over-the-moon passionate about pro football and merely curious about — if not repulsed by, hello Major League Baseball — the other leagues.

     You’d be a fool to dismiss Brian Flores and Hue Jackson as ranting, desperate losers. They are men who were asked, they say, to sacrifice their careers and reputations to lose games. “No head coach is going to survive,’’ said Jackson, “if you lose a lot of games.’’ The fact they are Black men only elucidates a sickening perception: They were hired as slaves to lose games and do the dirty work of billionaire owners.

     Both coaches will be systematically smeared, starting next week at the Super Bowl, where Goodell and the owners will downplay and deny. If they are wise men, they’ll start looking at each other with stinkeyes, wondering how many other tankers are among them.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.