By Blessing 
Discussion: Do You Think the NFL Has an Officiating Conspiracy?
Does the NFL have an officiating conspiracy? Or is it just frustrated fans seeing things that aren’t there?
Let’s be real—NFL officiating hasn’t exactly been inspiring confidence lately. It’s hard to find anyone who believes the referees are doing a great job. Watch the fanbase of any game, and you’ll quickly see people convinced the officials robbed their team. And honestly, they might have a point sometimes. Every Sunday, you can spot a few missed holding calls, questionable pass interference flags, and maybe even a sneaky offsides that somehow goes unnoticed.
The talk about officiating conspiracies has reached a boiling point, especially after Arian Foster joked on a podcast two years ago that the NFL was scripted. Since then, fans have been half-joking—and half-serious—about whether the league decides storylines before kickoff. That conversation caught fire again this week after the Detroit Lions fell to the Kansas City Chiefs in a game where the Chiefs weren’t penalized once. In fact, it was the first time since 1972 that a team finished a game with zero accepted penalties. Naturally, people started reviewing the tape and highlighting the “obvious” mistakes they swear the refs ignored.
Of course, some of this outrage can be chalked up to the “fanatic” in fandom. Every team feels cheated at some point. But others are digging deeper, trying to prove something more deliberate is happening. A recent study from UTEP claimed that the Chiefs benefited from certain penalties at a much higher rate than other playoff teams. However, critics pointed out that the study used only playoff data—because the numbers actually flip in the regular season. (Scott Kacsmar even wrote a full article debunking the Chiefs conspiracy here.)
So here’s today’s big question:
Do you think the NFL has an officiating conspiracy?
My answer:
You can take this however you like. Maybe you think the league subconsciously favors big-market teams or star players. Maybe you believe there’s something more calculated going on—like gambling influences or ratings-driven bias.
Personally, I lean on one classic rule of thumb: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
Refereeing an NFL game is brutally hard. Officials have to watch dozens of moving parts, make split-second calls, and do it all without slow-motion replays. No matter how much they’re paid, trained, or even threatened with fines, they’ll never see everything perfectly. Improvement is always possible—but perfection isn’t.
And if we’re honest, every fan base feels targeted at some point. Lions fans still talk about the batted-ball fiasco, phantom facemasks, and those brutal 10-second runoffs. But ask any other fan base, and they’ve got their own reel of officiating nightmares.
So no, I don’t think the NFL is running an officiating conspiracy. I just think referees are human—and sometimes bad at their incredibly difficult jobs.
But that’s just my take.
What about you? Drop your thoughts below — I’m genuinely curious.