Lefko: Schedule conspiracy against Seahawks? Why, of course there is

After the NFL released the schedule for the final week of the regular season, which features two NFC games with playoff implications – Seahawks vs. Rams and Packers vs. Lions – not kicking off at the same time, there have been some concerns that the league is showing favoritism towards the Packers.

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Surely that couldn’t be the case. Certainly the NFL wouldn’t try to cheat the Seahawks, right? Yet, with fears that something untoward was happening, something amiss in the way this is all playing out, I started to dig… and then dig some more… and what I found was shocking.

Not only is the NFL showing preferential treatment to the Packers, but there is also a deeply rooted, sinister plot by the league to conspire against the Seahawks this week against the Rams, and for the entirety of Seattle’s existence in the NFL.

There is simply too much to unpack for one article – stay tuned for what will likely become a weekly investigative series – but I’m going to start with the game at hand and work back to the very beginning in order to sum the full extent of the NFL’s conspiracy against the Seahawks.

The NFL wants the Packers to win, we all know that. However, what it wants equally as much is for the Packers-Lions game on Sunday night to be a true “win-and-in.” Thus, the league needs the Seahawks to lose. The easiest way to accomplish that is by getting the referee to affect the outcome with poorly-timed calls and suspicious penalties that swing the game to the Rams. After some simple digging, it’s easy to see why the NFL chose the ref it did.

Craig Wrolstad is the referee for the Seahawks-Rams game on Sunday. Craig Wrolstad – which is an anagram for “A Drastic Growl.” It’s so obvious that it’s insulting. A drastic growl is what Aaron Rodgers did before leading the Packers to a comeback win over the Bears in early December that sparked Green Bay’s four-game win streak. One can only come to the conclusion it was also the subject line of the email Roger Goodell sent to his associates when the Packers were on the brink of elimination and the league had to write the script for how to get them in the playoffs.

Whatever this ref’s real name is probably should have been used instead of the hastily created pseudonym because it so obviously reveals this guy is a Packers fan.

OK, maybe you weren’t convinced by that first point, but how do you explain this: Craig Wrolstad also unscrambles to “Acid Glow Starr.” Starr? Starr?!? Like Packers great Bart Starr, who conveniently happened to win the first two Super Bowls ever played? Just sickening how blatantly the NFL wants the Packers to win, and how it will do whatever possible to make sure the Seahawks lose.

Oh, and the worst part – the absolute worst, most abhorrent – example of how badly the NFL is trying to cheat the Seahawks: guess where Craig Wrolstad lives? Lake Tapps, Wash. Sinister, truly sinister. What better place to keep a close eye on the Seahawks than with someone who lives close enough to spy on them every day? It’s how the Russians did it during the Cold War. Make your spies ordinary American citizens, have them fully ingratiate themselves into the community, and then one day, after years and years of waiting for just the right moment, that perfect regular season finale that would decide the final wild card spot, BOOM!

Sunday’s matchup needs to be approached with suspicion. Keep a vigilant eye out for anything unusual or out of place. But this is just the latest example of a vendetta against the Hawks. In the course of this research I uncovered just how far-reaching the conspiracy to undermine the Seahawks goes.

• The inaugural season: The Seahawks began play in 1976, a year later another team suddenly appears and shares the Kingdome with them. Highly suspicious. That literally didn’t happen to any other NFL team that was founded in the 70s. It has been a thorough and all-encompassing effort to keep the Seahawks down and spy on their every move in order to make sure they aren’t too successful.

• The conference switch: After a decade without making the playoffs, the Seahawks were starting to figure it out. They reached the postseason in 1999 and were poised to assert their dominance over the AFC for the next thousand years, until… they had to switch conferences? A what? You’re just going to move them to a different conference? No other team in the history of the NFL has ever suffered such an indignity.

• Super Bowl XL: Oh wait, what’s that, NFL? The Seahawks figured out the NFC faster than you expected? Well that certainly won’t stand. Neither would ruining the perfectly crafted script, finely executed through an absurdly staged game between the Colts and Steelers a few weeks earlier, that culminated on the league’s grandest stage with a Super Bowl win by the Steelers. (Did you know Jerome Bettis is from Detroit, and the Super Bowl was in Detroit?)

So there it is, clear as day. If the NFL is willing to fix a game with the magnitude of the Super Bowl, the league is definitely willing and able to do the same for a game with much lesser stakes, of minimal importance to the overall health and image of the league, and thus one where not as many people are paying attention. The NFL wants the Packers, and they do not want the Seahawks to win on Sunday, but now you know their dirty secret. If the Seahawks don’t make the playoffs, this will be the only reason why.

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