Full transparency for replays could combat speculation, distrust, and allegations of game fixing

Unless the NFL has kept its head buried in the sand (and maybe it has), it has witnessed over the past five years an increase in allegations that games are fixed. It's exactly what Commissioner Roger Goodell warned against in 2012, when the NFL hated gambling — and before the NFL realized how much money could be made from it.

Said Goodell at the time: “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.”

I hear it all the time. The games are fixed, people think. It's all rigged and predetermined, they allege. And there's much more of it now that gambling is legal, and now that the NFL is stuffing its pockets with any and all gambling money it can grab.

While it's possible that a rogue actor or two could try to misappropriate inside information and/or to nudge the outcome of certain specific wagers one way or the other, there's no way the NFL could ever say, for example, "We want the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. Make it so."

The league could try. Too many people would be involved. And it would be too obvious when it was happening. After the fact, too many people would have to be kept quiet.

(That said, it's not impossible for game officials to conclude with a Cod Red being ordered that the powers-that-be would prefer that the team in red and white keeps winning. At some point, however, a disgruntled former official could claim that he or she felt pressure to make certain calls a certain way, even if no one ever articulated it.)

The unlikelihood of the fix being in doesn't stop fans from thinking the fix is in, because sports betting is now widely legal and because the league is profiting from it with a trio of "exclusive" sportsbook partners.

So what can be done to get people to realize the games aren't rigged? One way to do it would be to embrace transparency. When the replay assistant is contemplating a potential reversal and/or when a full-blown replay review is occurring, let's see it. Let's hear it. Let's witness the reality, in real time, of the effort to get the calls right.

Currently, those decisions are made in secret. The league rarely explains anything. When the league does, it's predictable and conclusory and not very helpful when it comes to explaining why a given call was made, especially if it seemed to be a bad call.

There was a time when in-house officiating executives like Dean Blandino and Mike Pereira would appear on NFL Network and elsewhere to explain calls and admit mistakes when mistakes had been made.

Imagine that. The NFL actually admitting to bad calls instead of circling the wagons and/or dropping Walt Anderson into a broadcast to explain an inconsequential ruling (like a non-call of intentional grounding in the first quarter of a Raiders-Lions game) while not using him to explain far more critical situations (like the eligible-receiver fiasco on the two-point play at the end of the Lions-Cowboys game).

The XFL (and, presumably the UFL) has embraced transparency, with Blandino making the decisions. The NFL has yet to do it. (Maybe someone who was invited to next week's press conference for the Commissioner will ask whether and when the NFL will do it.)

Earlier this week, when I asked the league's executive V.P. for P.R. whether the NFL has witnessed "speculation, distrust and accusations of point-shaving or game-fixing" and what the league has done to prevent it or counter it, I got a lot of words but no indication of any real action. I still haven't gotten an answer as to whether the NFL is seeing and hearing more allegations of the fix being in.

Plenty of people think the NFL in a post-legalized gambling world is rigged. The currently top-secret replay process adds to that speculation. One very easy way to push back would be to open the windows and let the sun shine in for all efforts to review a ruling on the field.

It needs to happen. Those who truly care about the integrity of the game need to be willing to demand it, because the longer the NFL refuses to embrace transparency, the louder the cries of game-fixing will get.