USC-Utah game isn't one for (Vegas) books

Los Angeles Times ^ | September 10 , 2011 | Gary Klein and Baxter Holmes

[ConservativeStatement]

USC's 23-14 victory over Utah sent Las Vegas sports books into a tizzy Saturday night.

The game originally ended with USC winning, 17-14. But two hours after the game, the Pacific 12 Conference overruled game officials who had not allowed a last-second touchdown by USC's Torin Harris after a blocked field-goal attempt.

Contacted about the finish by The Times, a supervisor at the MGM Mirage Sports Book said, "That cost us huge. We needed USC to cover the 8½ and when they didn't allow that touchdown, that killed us."

[ConservativeStatement]

This was my first thought when I saw the score altered.

[Leaning Right]

So did the post-game change make the bookies happy? Evidently not. From the article:

“Now we lose double,” he said, “because we'd already cashed out. We can't collect from people we already paid.”

[ConservativeStatement]

I don’t think articles from the Las Vegas newspaper can be posted on FR. Check out the detailed article. Very interesting. It is http://www.lvrj.com/

[cherry]

as a football fan and former season ticket holder, I have to warn Colorado and Utah that Pac "10" officials are the worse...arrogant, smug.

changing a score AFTER the game smacks of power broking....could they change a score AFTER a game and change the winner as well?

the BCS is already suspect but what if some scores were changed on "second thoughs" and a lesser known school gets the shaft over a Monied school....like a USC or an Oregone.

[Verginius Rufus]

Fortunately for the Tigers, this wouldn’t happen in baseball. Otherwise they might change the score of the last game of the World Series in 1945 and give the series to the Chicago Cubs. But chances are none of the umpires from the 1945 WS are still alive.

[JLS]

I believe this does cause an issue that people on both side will want to collect. I doubt the bookies need any particular outcome. If they did, they were not being very good bookies but were gambling. They don’t make money in Las Vegas by gambling.

[CommerceComet]

I couldn't care less about the problems of the bookmakers but the Pac-12 shouldn't reverse an official's call after-the-fact unless it affects the win-loss outcome.

One has to wonder why the Pac-10 wasn't so proactive on reversing calls in 2006 when Oklahoma was completely robbed in Eugene, Oregon on the on-side kick. Still the worst officiating blunder I've ever seen -- made worse by the fact that they took forever reviewing video tape to make a call which the video showed was clearly wrong for several different reasons.