There are more variables in football than in American sports. The bounce of a ball, the width of a post, the mistiming of a tackle -- you can't "stage" this kind of thing in football, at least easily. And you don't get people standing around for ages as you do in American sports, waiting for things to happen. It might be easy to plot the outcome of a game were it as stop-start as your national sports, but it's not. It's pretty frantic stuff for two periods of 45 minutes each, and it can be pretty fiery too, with pbuttions roused and tempers flaring, something you don't see much of in the rather staid and dull affair you call football in America.
No doubt there's some corruption in the game, but I don't think it's endemic. As for getting the press to investigate, well that's just laughable. I'm sure you're all too well aware of the number of top-ranking journalists in America who have been sacked in recent years for fabricating stories. Don't kid yourself the press are impartial, or equipped to investigate anything. They're just people with a qualification in journalism who are full of self-importance since the collapse of the first, second and third estates. Hopefully it won't be long till the media itself is exposed as the biggest liar of them all. And with it fools who hang on their every word. -- + His Holiness Pope Pompous XVIII
"This is all Blarney!" -- Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth I
