.................I live in the real world.

Professional sports can absolutely be rigged. It has happened before and has been easily discovered and proved. You cannot hide fixing games in todays world. What you have just posted simply shows the sad state of affairs in the NFL when it comes to officiating. There is nothing orchestrated. It is pure and simple incompetence. And it's going to continue to occur until the NFL goes to fulltime officials.

The incompetence in officiating is costing too many games for more teams each week. It isn't until a big market team gets screwed that fans start to care. I am a rugby referees coach and we don't just evaluate refs but work on fixing the issues. I guess the league doesn't want go to with full time referees who are coached. Not just evaluated but coached which is how they need to do it in the future.

There's all the reasons why they SAY they refs aren't 'full time'. The stuff they broadcast to media and fans. I'm more interested in what they REALLY say behind closed corporate doors. The league resists too many obvious fixes to the problem for my taste.