[Welpe]

Here is what happened. The booth buzzed the R and said the last play needed to be reviewed. Whether or not there was a illegal forward pass is one such play that may be reviewed. They reviewed the play and realized that there was an illegal forward pass but that the penalty would be declined by Pittsburgh. OK fine, line up for the PAT.

While lining up for the PAT, an onfield official runs in and confers with the Referee. The Referee announces that the illegal forward pass makes the ball dead. The easiest explanation for this is that they incorrectly thought the backward pass that hit the ground was in fact the one that was ruled forward. That would make the ball dead. They simply screwed it up on the field.

That explanation makes a lot more sense than an onfield official running in and telling the R, "Hey this will mean that Pittsburgh covers the spread. We have to overrule this!"

A screwup this big is going to expose the crew and league to much criticism and I highly doubt they would intentionally open themselves up it. To do so in the same year as the Hoculi incident and other high profile incidents would be very foolish.

Let's take the rest point by point:

Originally Posted by PeteBooth

1. Legal betters in Las Vegas had an $83 Million swing on the outcome of the game.

Similar with every other nationally televised football game, I'm sure.

2. 13 Penalties on Pittsburgh to 1 for the Chargers.

Completely irrelevant. You've never had a lopsided game where one pitcher can find the strike zone and the other can't? If a team commits more fouls, they will be assessed more penalties.

The pass interference call on the Steelers in the first / second quarter was simply a joke

I didn't see the foul so you will have to enlighten us. Why was it a joke? Did it not fit into one of the categories of pass interference or is that just your opinion?

3. The score was 11-10 - Steelers won so why even bother going over the play to begin with whether the call was right / wrong - It meant NOTHING at that point. The Chargers didn't care - They lost and the Steelers didn't care they ALREADY won.

Because it is the rule and the accuracy of the score and the statistics depend upon it.

4. IR's main use is to make certain that no team gets hosed - Not change the score to accomodate a point spread. There was absolutley no reason for the Replay official to even get involved with this.

That's a mighty big speculation on your end and you have no proof to backup that is why this play was reviewed. This play was reviewed by the booth because they saw a pass that looked forward and they were required by rule to review it.

Originally Posted by PeteBooth

First things first

It's not Flimsy when that type of money is involved and the ENTITE state of affairs in the game starting with the Penalty disparity.

So how can the entire state of affairs be at risk over this play when you already said the game was already decided?

It happened in the NBA. There is far more money bet on football games than basketball.

Donaghy got away with what he did for so long because he made subtle foul calls that affected his games by shaving points. Not by changing the entire spread of a game in one call. By all accounts, he acted as a lone official. This is an entire crew we're talking about here, so not only would the entire field crew need to be in on the fix but so would the replay officials. Entire crews have been known to blow calls in the heat of the moment. This time it just happened to effect the spread.

If it happend in the NBA what makes you think it cannot happen in Football. Do you really believe that he is the ONLY Official ever involved?

I never said it couldn't happen in football but I would hope you would have more than flimsy evidence before impugning the integrity of this crew. You're not even content to give them the benefit of the doubt, something I would hope you would afford another official.

Answer this question, why does the NFL care about the point spread of this particular game?