$100M OOPS

Baseball is my favorite sport but since the Padres never really contested for a spot in the 2008 World Series at all this year, I’ll try to reclaim some San Diego sports pride by cheering on the Chargers, who were forecasted to be one of the top teams to watch this season. However, the Bolts are playing defense like kindergarteners calling “Red Rover, Red Rover, send anyone with a ball right on over” and they continue to allow opposing teams to rack up yards and points against them.

Bad as that is, the worst play in Sunday’s game against Pittsburgh was undoubtedly head referee Scott Green’s erroneous dead ball call that resulted in the Steelers last second TD not counting. Vegas bets were placed overwhelmingly in favor of the Steelers with a 4.5 point spread. With less than 10 seconds left in the game and the Chargers trailing 11-10, there was enough time to call on the Football Miracle gods and attempted a series of forward laterals that in my prayers would have resulted in a SD touchdown. But then the Football God pissed off the Gambling God (you wished you worshipped here too huh?) and somehow Troy Polamalu was able to scoop up the third lateral pass and sprinted into the end zone to give the Steelers the uncontested lead as the clock expired. Of course, a flag was thrown and the refs met in their inner circle to converse about dinner later, which cheerleaders were hot, and maybe they discussed the play, but eventually they let the touchdown stand. At least until Jeff Reed was set to kick the extra point, at which point the refs held another summit (seems they couldn’t agree on the hottest cheerleader) and Ref Scott Green ruled the ball dead where Polamalu had gained control, striking the TD off the scoreboard. The game ended at 11-10 Steelers though Green later admitted the touchdown was erroneously taken away due to all the confusion in the zebra cage regarding which lateral pass was in question. While the call wouldn’t have affected who won, it did result in the Steelers not covering the spread, making the Vegas sports books the truly sorry losers.