There’s nothing like enjoying a good football season, but sometimes, how a game plays out makes it feel ridiculous, with great players losing to bad ones or a team that won a glorious match one day losing the next day. The 100-year-old National Football League is undeniably America’s highly viewed sport.
Each team has to play 17 games, after which they’ll be heading to the Super Bowl. This makes it hard to believe that the NFL could be scripted. After all, making so many teams learn the script and forcing them to act according to it would be absurd.
This hasn’t stopped many viewers from blaming the NFL for being scripted, especially after the recent games, which had unexpected outcomes. To mock these fans who accuse the football league, the NFL even came out with a hilarious advertisement.
The ad shows players and coaches all gathered at a table and preparing to read a script for the 104th NFL season. While this was released as nothing more than a funny joke, some fans are still left confused about the legitimacy of the game’s results.
Is the NFL Scripted? The Players & Coaches Say Otherwise
Seeing the recent surge in the skepticism surrounding the NFL’s realness, Tom Brady had a perfect response for the journalists when asked about it after a match. The quarterback joked that he wouldn’t have let the scriptwriters make him lose to Eli Manning twice in a matter of few years.
Football has had its list of unbelievable miracles, which will always remain iconic. An example would be when Tim Tebow painted his face with bible verses John 3:16, and three years later, he ended up with a game where he threw for 316 yards, and the match was rated 31.6 as well.
While this was just a “coincidence,” there are plenty of other moments that aren’t too hard to stage. Another thing that fuels such allegations is the way bets on the game keep increasing every year. With such high amounts of cash on the line, it’s easy to believe that the results could be altered a bit to prefer a certain team.
The audience has a clear view of the match and its outcomes, but since the referees are only human and cannot monitor every single movement, there are chances of missing out on important little details that could’ve changed the final results. The NFL doesn’t make any efforts to deal with this problem, so that’s another reason why viewers assume the matches are staged.
Since it falls into the TV side of “sports entertainment,” the same as WWE, the NFL isn’t forced to show what’s real. It’s easy to believe that matches could be staged, but when we think about the number of people who are working behind every single match, the possibility of that ever happening becomes less.
Instead, referees may nudge the results to favor a certain team or player in some instances. This is a far-fetched theory, too, but more believable than the entire game being scripted and all the players being provided with scripts to follow.
These football players earn millions of dollars for every game and even put their popularity on the line, so there’s no way a good player would agree to risk their career and accept a loss when they could’ve played well on their own.
The recent ad from the NFL, which shows players in group meetings, is just a way of mocking the way fans keep blaming the referees and the players for faking results to head toward a certain outcome.
To keep the games more entertaining, it’s possible that they would at least alter small bits of games that have very close scores.
In conclusion, it’s hard to believe that a game as elaborate as the NFL is scripted or has its players become actors for every game. Referees could ignore or change certain details to push a team or player to victory, but other than that, the NFL is likely not scripted at all.
Instead of arguing over its realness, it’s better to just enjoy the entertaining football matches and appreciate the players who train hard for every season.
