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Several years ago, I heard someone ask the talk-show host on the radio station 660 AM WFAN what was the most unusual score in a football game, or maybe I dreamt that I heard someone ask it. To this day, I'm still not sure. But now I know the answer. The most unusual score in a football game is 11 to 10, because that was the final score of today's Chargers-Steelers game, and it was announced that there had NEVER been a football game with that score before. Who knew?

This morning, the radio talk-show hosts were making a big fuss over Donovan McNabb's statement that he didn't realize that NFL games in the regular season might end in a tie. (The Eagles-Bengals game was tied after their fifteen minutes of overtime yesterday, so the game ended as a tie.) They were ridiculing him for not knowing the rules, and they called him names.

I didn't think it was so bad that he didn't know that the game might end in a tie. And it didn't affect the way he played. He still played to win. If the Bengals had scored during overtime, thereby winning the game, and if Donavan had said afterward that he was surprised that the Eagles didn't get another chance to score, meaning that he didn't understand sudden-death, that would have been really funny, but it didn't happen.

So he didn't know (or forgot) the rule. So what? This morning, Mike Burrero (spelling?), the VP of Officiating for the NFL, talked to the radio talk-show hosts, and he said that the apparent touchdown scored by the Steelers at the end of the game should have counted, and he said that the officials at the game screwed up. He acknowledged that at first, it was declared a touchdown, but he said that everyone else got confused and talked the official out of it, and they shouldn't have been allowed to do so. It had something to do with the Chargers making a forward pass when it was supposed to be a lateral, and the officials got confused as to which of the Chargers' passes that were supposed to be lateral was the unintended forward pass. And they weren't allowed to double-check.

For some reason, they're not allowed to change the score. I don't know why. I remember a Yankees baseball game from years ago in which Mike Pagliarulo crossed home plate, but no one at the time thought that it counted as a run. Even Mike's expression as he touched home plate indicated that he didn't think that it counted as a run. The final score was given that the Yankees had won by three runs, and Lee Guetterman, who pitched the ninth inning, was credited with a save. The next day, it was announced that the Yankees had won by four runs, because Mike's run counted after all, and Lee was deprived of his save, since he had protected a four-run lead. Lee made a joke that from now on, he was going to double-check the score before taking the mound.

So if MLB can change a score afterwards, and the Official Scorer can change hits to errors and vice versa a day or two later, I don't know why the NFL can't change the score. I do think it's very funny, though, that the one time there is a 11 to 10 score in the history of the NFL, it's because of a screw-up on the officials' part. I guess that's why the score is so unusual.

eda, the NFL has acknowledged that a touchdown was scored at the end of the game, and the call was overruled by mistake.

http://sports.yahoo.com/n...amp;prov=ap&type=lgns

Everyone agrees that one of the lateral passes was really a forward pass. The guys on the radio said that there was a problem because the officials became confused regarding which lateral pass was actually the forward one.

I think it is apples to oranges, though. Just because the MLB allows something in their rules doesn't mean that the NFL does, or should. It is similar to the Spygate situation - the MLB doesn't have any rules about stealing signs, it is perfectly legal to do so in major league baseball. But the NFL made a huge deal about it.

Oh, sure, I know it's apples and oranges. And the NFL does something that I wish MLB would do. The NFL gives a player half a sack when the situation calls for it. I wish MLB would give a player half an error when the situation calls for it, such as when a ball drops between two players. Instead, the batter is given a hit.

I was very angry during the World Series after the suspended game when Bud Selig announced that if play had ended when the Phillies were winning (as opposed to the score being tied), he would not have allowed it to be called an official game, even though the game would have been official during the regular season. I don't like the rules being changed midstream. Did he have the right to make such a change on the spot, without anyone voting on it? I heard someone who called the radio station claim that if a World Series game ended before five innings (or four and a half, whatever was needed to be an official game) were completed, the game would be suspended, and they would pick up where they left off the next day, instead of everything being treated as if it never happened, as in the case of a regular season game. I don't know if he was making this up, or it MLB had already decided this. If all games in the regular season were suspended instead of being rained out in the regular season, that would be fine with me.

But I don't want someone changing the rules on the spot! When Bud Selig addressed the crowd after the final game of the World Series, they all booed him. I didn't blame them one bit.