re: For those that believe the NFL is rigged, what would it take to convince you otherwise?

It's basically insignificant people trying to show they they're significant because "they know something" that nobody else knows.

And I'll take the opportunity to share this from The New York Times about Jessica Savitch's supposed expose on the NFL. (And point out that she was famously fired from NBC because of her enormous drug habit, and that this documentary was not well thought of in the legitimate journalistic community at the time it was aired, we actually were laughing about it the morning after it aired in our newsroom, although I'm sure the response will be that we were all in on the plot.)

"The evidence is compiled largely from press reports and rumors of fixes over the years; from interviews with two convicted gamblers and a mob figure turned informer, the famous Jimmy (the Weasel) Fratianno - all of whom, it is acknowledged on the program, were paid for their stories, and from the suspicions of Federal Bureau of Investigation, police and antigambling spokesmen. We are reminded that in the past players like Joe Namath and Paul Hornung kept unsavory company, and we are informed that several team owners are doing so right now. The inevitable follow-up question - whether this signifies that games are being fixed today, as a former bookie asserts that they were a decade ago - receives no sure answer.

"The game plan behind this documentary seems to be that if enough balls are tossed into play, somebody may score a goal. So Jessica Savitch, the host for the series, tells of the millions of dollars riding on football scores each week and warns that gamblers will do anything they can to win. We learn that Joe Namath ''could often be found playing liar's poker in a notorious nightclub.'' We look into a Las Vegas betting operation and witness a police raid on a small-time Florida bookie. Exclusives are offered, on the order of: '' 'Frontline' has learned that the I.R.S. is investigating ticket scalping.''

"There is one main assay into investigative reporting, an apparently successful effort to track down a witness to the drowning in 1979 of Carroll Rosenbloom, owner of the Los Angeles Rams. The witness tells of his suspicions that murder was done, although he did not actually see a crime being committed. One of the interviewed convicts also thinks that Mr. Rosenbloom was murdered, and a liedetector test confirms that he believes that he is telling the truth - but he was not there. (I asked David Fanning, the executive producer of ''Frontline,'' whether payments to sources and liedetector tests would be used in other programs as well. Conceding that the practices were dubious, he explained that the need to get information from felons seemed to justify them in this case.) In any event, whether Mr. Rosenbloom was killed or not does not add a nickel to the sum of our knowledge about game fixing, despite Miss Savitch's opinion that he was ''perhaps the first N.F.L. owner whose underworld ties led to his death.''

"As hard evidence of continuing illegality is not forthcoming, the program settles for criticizing the N.F.L. for not cracking down on the questionable associations of club owners and players, and so deterring them from undue temptation. Miss Savitch, as interviewer, tries to tackle Pete Rozelle, head of the N.F.L., on the matter of its purported negligence, but he proves a hard man to bring to earth.

"Common sense and common experience support the suspicions voiced here that where big money and unsavory characters bulk as large as they do in illegal gambling, finagling is likely, but that is about as far as this documentary takes us. When an investigator who sets out to expose a subject settles finally for a suggestive glimpse, that is an incomplete pass."