No, the Super Bowl isn’t rigged, regardless of what your social feed says

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As the final seconds of the AFC Championship game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City ticked down, and it was clear the Chiefs would defeat the visiting Buffalo Bills, social media provided plenty of explanations and opinions about what had just transpired on the gridiron.

If you were scrolling as a fan of Kansas City or its quarterback Patrick Mahomes, you probably liked and shared posts about his incredible track record in the postseason. Maybe you lauded defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s aggressive play-calling and the Chiefs’ fourth-down stops on short-yardage situations that proved critical in the 32-29 victory.

But if you were basically anyone else, you likely were inundated with posts about how the NFL is rigged; how Mahomes is untouchable because he is best friends with league commissioner Roger Goodell; and even for the need for microchips in footballs so that clearly biased/blind refs don’t make another bad call, like the one that cost Buffalo a chance at its first Super Bowl victory. There was outrage — lots of it. And there were conspiracy theories — plenty to go around. Even #boycottsuperbowl started trending.

@newslitproject 🏈 Gonna watch the Big Game? Nearly half of teens in our 2024 survey thought the Super Bowl was rigged. Let’s talk briefly about confirmation bias & motivated reasoning + sports fandom #SuperBowl #Chiefs #TaylorSwift #SuperBowlLIX #NewsLiteracyWeek ♬ original sound – News Literacy Project

As someone who works in news literacy and as an avid sports fan and former sportswriter, this reaction to a huge game with huge implications and yes, controversy, was unsurprising. Sports aficionados are a fickle bunch, and confirmation bias and motivated reasoning run wild among fan bases across the globe. Overreactions and hot takes are a part of sports fandom, so I’m not one to make a big deal out of partisans blaming a close loss on the refs.

But I’ve been thinking more about conspiracy theories in sports since the nonprofit organization I work for, the News Literacy Project, released a survey of 1,100 teens late last year. Among many alarming takeaways was this: Nearly half of teens think the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl are rigged. To be clear, there is zero credible evidence to support this. But with Kansas City and its star QB — along with Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce’s superstar superfan girlfriend Taylor Swift — preparing to try to become the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row this Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles, such false claims are only multiplying. Just imagine if they win!

And here’s where it’s worth thinking about the broader implications, because, sorry folks, sports are a part of the real world. We already live in an era of unprecedented conspiratorial thinking, distrust in institutions and downright cynicism. Safe and fair elections are questioned, journalists are berated for reporting the facts, and the offline harms of social media posts are very real.

Beyond football, we know that teens are exposed to conspiracy theories with alarming frequency on social media — and they’re falling for them. The News Literacy Project’s study found that 80 percent of young people see them at least once a week, and of those, 81% believe at least one. Some of the most frequent narratives teens said they see being pushed: that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen, that the COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous and that the Earth is flat.

Sports events, in many ways, are the last bastion of broadly accepted truth in society. Games are played with winners and losers, and we move on to the next one. Refs make calls — many good, some bad. If you want a comprehensive breakdown of refs’ calls in Chiefs recent playoff games, here you go — just remember that cherry-picking stats is another pastime of conspiratorial thinkers.

I can’t read the minds of the 48% of teens who said they thought the NFL was rigged. Maybe they really believe it; maybe they just don’t care about football.

The bigger point is that this kind of evidence-free, conspiratorial thinking trickles down to those other topics way more important than football. So let me leave you with a field goal’s worth of news literacy tips.

As with any story, I’d encourage those who might think the league is fixed to:

1. Go to the source. Who is saying this? What might their motivations be? Are any journalists who cover the league reporting this?
2. Examine the evidence. No, a few calls going against your team does not equal collusion.
3. And finally, check your own biases. Are you letting your fan-fueled confirmation bias and motivated reasoning get in the way of the facts? It’s possible. As a long-suffering Detroit Lions fan, I can (somewhat) relate…

Jake Lloyd is director of social media at the News Literacy Project.