Where are the moves?

[THE PISTONS]

(08-31-2019, 11:05 PM)grampahol Wrote: I'll likely get a lot of disagreements from folks here which is fine by me. We're entitled to our individual opinions even though none of us or at least none that I'm aware of have any real financial stakes in what goes on with this or any other team or leagues. The only real stakes we have is whether we buy tickets or "gear" from the teams or otherwise pay money to watch on TV or other venues.
That said, it's my opinion that as an owner of an NFL franchise or just about any pro sports franchise at the major levels, NFL, MLB, NBA, etc., as opposed to minor leagues and so on it's nearly impossible to lose money in the business. It certainly seems like Mike Brown or any NFL owner would have to just give every fan that even so much as thinks about the team(s) a big box of cash, thousands and thousands of dollars every game in order to lose money owning the team. Short of that every single player would have to be paid upwards of tens of millions of dollars per game.
In other words, they have so much money at their disposal it's utterly absurd. How could it be even possible that the Bengals could be valued at over a billion dollars? Simple, they're part of the cabal to entertain us all every Sunday during the season. The team could be located just about anywhere. It just happens to be located in or very close to downtown Cincinnati. 
I really don't believe they're in any true competition in winning championships. If you can make billions of dollars owning a team regardless of whether they win or not the notion that they care enough goes right out the window.
Think about it. Over the past decade or thereabouts the Browns win/loss record should show a team on the verge of financial ruin, but yet they can simply buy better players while a team, the Bengals in this case with a much better win/loss record over the same time span cannot buy their way to a championship? Now why is that? If I were a betting man and I most certainly am not I might think there's something called collusion going on to ensure that certain teams are going to win while others are not. They all play on Sundays and we know that the 'best teams' don't always play against other 'best teams' and the 'lousy teams' don't always play against other 'lousy teams'. They simply switch them around to make it appear it's an even competition. To make it worse every season there's always controversy (and many other controversies) about referees throwing games to favored teams and QBs whether you want to believe it's going on or not. There is no controversy over whether there is a controversy or not. The league and owners still make profits with controversy in the same way that all publicity is good publicity. Nobody ever got rich by never being noticed by enough people.
All that said and even though I don't and never will believe that everything is on the up and up in professional sports, I'm still a fan of two professional sports franchises, The Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals.  I'd love to believe they're both completely honest brokers for my attention and sports dollars, but my suspicious mind and years of reading and hearing about dirty deeds by players, coaches, owners, agents and so on tell me a completely different story and that is that Mike Brown makes enough money owning the team he doesn't really have to care whether the team wins or loses any given day and when you get right down to it owning a pro sports team IS a business there to make profits first and foremost.. Winning is nice, but no team will ever win the superbowl by being in perpetual bankruptcy. I believe he wants to win, but if winning means fewer dollars on his balance sheet losing will do just as good. 

IF the NFL were fixed and they chose to make the Bengals not win a playoff game for 28+ years...that would be one of the cruelest things ever.

The Rams making the SB last year on that terrible pass interference call seems to be evidence of a fix...but who knows? Is it intentional? Is it inept officiating? Is it fixed?