Saints\u2019 owner Gayle Benson released a statement<\/a> in which she vowed to \u2018aggressively pursue changes in NFL policies to ensure no team and fan base is ever put in a similar position again\u2019. Benson\u2019s \u2018vow\u2019 ranks among the most ridiculous things that has ever been said. How exactly does she plan to do this? Give any team whose executives, players and\/or fans complain stridently enough about the outcome of a game the right to order a \u2018do over\u2019? Make ESPN\u2019s Stephen A. Smith the final arbiter of what \u2018should\u2019 and \u2018shouldn\u2019t\u2019 happen in a sporting event?<\/p>\nThe reality is that sports, like life, is a ridiculously chaotic process. When I\u2019m trying to instruct neophyte handicappers the first thing I emphasize is that they immediately disabuse themselves of the notion that sports are like their video game counterparts. In a video game, many variables are hard coded into the DNA of the contest that can\u2019t be duplicated in real life. In other words, an official can\u2019t \u2018miss a call\u2019 in a video game. The code won\u2019t allow it. The strange things that do happen in video games are also built into the coding meaning that injuries, missed tackles, etc. happen based on random number generation.<\/p>\n
In a real world sporting event you\u2019ve got hundreds if not thousands of \u2018moving parts\u2019 that can effect the outcome in both a positive or negative manner. Even deeper, these moving parts are all the responsibility of actual human beings. These humans make mistakes, get distracted and are otherwise imperfect like every other person on the planet. The only way to eliminate this is to take the humans out of the process. The problem is that this is impossible. Even if NFL football was contested by teams of robots or if Jared Goff and Drew Brees sat down on the 50 yard line and played a game of \u2018Madden NFL 19\u2019 the human element can\u2019t be removed. You could take Goff and Brees out of the equation\u2014set the video game to autoplay the Saints vs. the Rams for the right to go to the Super Bowl and the human element remains. The Saints could always blame the programmers that coded the game for the loss.<\/p>\n
No one expects the New Orleans Saints\u2019 team and fanbase to not be disappointed by the turn of events that they feel kept them out of the Super Bowl. In light of this, they\u2019ve got every right to make their feelings known. At some point, however, you\u2019ve got to turn the page. It\u2019s not the responsibility of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL head of officials Alberto Riverton or NFL Executive VP of Football Operations to eliminate the human element from professional football. Short of giving Roger Goodell the ability to \u2018book\u2019 the NFL to facilitate desired outcomes the way that Vince McMahon \u2018books\u2019 the WWE mistakes made by humans are going to happen throughout the complex ecosystem of a sporting event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the span of a few days the New Orleans Saints have become the most insufferable team in the National…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5048"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5051,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5048\/revisions\/5051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}