Last night when the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu scooped up a San Diego Chargers fumble and dove into the endzone, I was thrilled to see an exciting ending to a hard-fought game. Minutes later, the officiating crew took the TD away and ruled the play an illegal forward pass by the Charges. It didn’t seem to matter all that much — the Steelers still won the game, 11-10. Then I read Peter King’s story about it in Sports Illustrated and realized how costly a mistake it was.

The problem is the Steelers were very heavy betting favorites in this game. One Vegas bookie said last night that $100 million was bet on this game alone, with $66 million of that bet on the Steelers. The Steelers were four-point favorites. Instead of winning 17-10 or 18-10, the Steelers won 11-10. Thus they didn’t cover, much to the angst of gamblers around the United States. The call led to the conspiracy theory that somebody must have been in on the action to influence such a gigantic swing in the betting line. I don’t buy it. I would never buy it for two reasons: 1) There are too many safeguards in place that would cause the ruination of too many people — the officiating crew, those in the league office who supervise and regulate the officials all the way up to the highest offices of the NFL — whose lives and careers would be forever tarnished for a few million dollars. 2) There is also the sheer impossibility of inventing some sort of fix like this to consider. How do you make up a play like that and get the word to the officials to call it a certain way? There’s no way.