Life itself is enough of gamble!

The tinfoil hatters will love this, while the recreational gamblers surely noticed.

That Steelers-Chargers game Sunday, that ended with the unlikely score of 11-10? The referee admitted he blew the call and that the Steelers should have received credit for a touchdown Troy Polamalu scored on the final play of the game after recovering an errant Chargers lateral. The the 5½-point favourite Steelers would have covered the spread had they won, and most of the money bet on the game was placed on Pittsburgh. The official explanation was that it was an illegal forward pass. Anyone who watches football every Sunday has seen enough of those end-of-the-half plays where the ball has been passed forward from one offensive player to another and the whistle was not blown.

And does it look like anyone on San Diego pitched the ball forward?



This is a little glib, but after the Tim Donaghy scandal, all the ball-and-stick leagues have to be on their toes any time something looks like it might anything less than on the level. The NFL takes in severalfold times more money in legal and illegal wagers than pro basketball, to say nothing of people in fantasy leagues who could have used a defensive touchdown, and it looks sketchy. The penalties also went 13-2 against the Steelers.

A Pro Football Talk commenter said that today illustrated why you don't bet on sports. One, the athletes don't know the rules (i.e., Donovan McNabb saying, possible tongue-in-cheek, that he didn't realize there are ties in the NFL), two, the referees don't know the rules and three, the media doesn't know the rules. When there's no rules, there's no game.

(Clip via Vegas Watch.)