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By Root 713 0

win and lose games. In the NBA, Michael Jordan’s Bulls attracted record audiences in the 1990s. The ratings of the NBA Finals in 1998 were superior to the 1998 World Series, which featured the New York Yankees. Did the League (and then- television partner NBC) want Jordan around for the Finals? Of course it did. But if the League wanted to arrange or fix the Bulls, then they left entirely too much money on the table. Think about it. The Bulls, in their six NBA Championships, never needed a seventh game. The record ratings would have skyrocketed with each Game Seven. In 1998, the deciding Game Six (Jordan’s final game with the Bulls) registered an NBA record 22.3 rating with a 38 share. The game was viewed by an estimated seventy-two million Americans. There would have been three days to build up the hype surrounding a Game 7. The game would have been played on a Wednesday night, when most people are home. So it’s not a stretch to say the game would have attracted nearly a 30 rating with a 43 share. That’s roughly the same number of people that watch the Academy Awards, which is usually the second most watched show in a calendar year, following the Super Bowl.

While it’s unlikely that the Bulls could have been extended to a full seven-game series in all six championship series they played in, it certainly could have happened once or twice. But it didn’t. All it would have taken was a phone call here, a blown call there. But sometimes you have to believe in the integrity of the game, the commissioner, the coaches, the referees, and the players on the court.

Sometimes, the difference between the winning and losing team in a semifinal series can be monumental in terms of championship game ratings. But I cannot put much stock into any fan thinking that a group of people would jeopardize the integrity of their sport for a few extra ratings points. In the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals, the Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant-led Lakers defeated a more or less anonymous Sacramento Kings team in seven games, saving the NBA and NBC from a potentially low-rated finals series. But for every instance in which the leagues got their dream championship match-up, I can point out other examples in which they didn’t. Major League Baseball had the Chicago Cubs in the League Championship Series in 2003. Don’t you think that everyone wanted to see the Cubbies in the World Series for the first time since 1945? It would have been huge! Instead, the Florida Marlins defeated the Cubs in seven games, and advanced to the Fall Classic.

Which brings us to referees and the trust in which sports fans place on them. Until July of 2007—just before the first edition of this book went to press—the four major sports in the United States (Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League) had never had a scandal involving referees fixing games. That changed in late July of 2007, of course, when NBA referee Tim Donaghy came under federal investigation for his involvement in a gambling and point-shaving operation. NBA commissioner David Stern issued a statement, saying, “We would like to assure our fans that no amount of effort, time or personnel is being spared to assist in this investigation, to bring to justice an individual who has betrayed the most sacred trust in professional sports, and to take the necessary steps to protect against this ever happening again.” Soccer fans in other parts of the world that I know little about have had referees or officials accused and convicted of fixing games countless times—in places like Israel, Zimbabwe, the Czech Republic, and Italy. It challenges the very integrity of the games. Sports fans that invest their time and money on these games have to believe (outside of isolated incidents that the leagues can’t control) the games are contested fairly.

Along these same lines, I have to believe that the voting done by fans to select All-Star Game starters or MVPs is completely legit. In the final few days before fan voting ended for the 2007 All-Star Game,