Columnist Dean Juipe: Refs, doctors are factors in playoffs

Dean Juipe

Monday, Jan. 21, 2002 | 10:34 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

You study the numbers.

You analyze the figures.

You investigate the trends.

Hour after hour passes and the serious bettor -- and, at certain times of the year, the casual one -- is doing his homework. He's inquisitive and resourceful and unrelenting.

He takes advantage of the access he has and tries to uncover a little something to give him an edge on the next guy or the house.

And then an old man in a striped shirt standing in a snowstorm goes brain dead, and a variance that no one had considered is actually determining the outcome of a football game.

Or a doctor misses the mark during what should have been a routine injection and a team's best player is ruled out for a game that is only moments away from kickoff.

Each of the latter two examples surfaced this weekend in the National Football League playoffs, bewildering fans and, potentially, outraging bettors. For all the preparation and study that seemingly a million Las Vegas residents and guests put into these second-round games, one was flat-out decided by a mistaken referee and another could have been undercut by a team's own sloppy doctor.

Neither would offer any consolation to a bettor holding the wrong end of a ticket or parlay card.

In the case of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the doctor, or nurse or aide who improperly administered a painkilling injection into the groin area of star running back Jerome Bettis, it failed to affect the game's outcome. Yet it certainly had that potential, although the Steelers overcame the loss of Bettis to advance to the AFC championship game with a 27-10 win over Baltimore on Sunday.

Bettis had been plagued by groin troubles during the week but was expected to play and was hoping the pregame injection would give him a boost. But when the needle reportedly missed the mark ... yikes, having a needle even near your groin is unsettling enough without adding a mishap to the scenario ... Bettis had a leg go numb and he was back in street clothes.

"Thanks, doc," those sports book patrons with a Steelers ticket were apt to sarcastically remark after word spread of the blunder with Bettis.

But that's nothing compared to the invectives directed toward referee Walt Coleman the night before when he took it upon himself in Foxboro, Mass., to reopen a game that moments earlier the Oakland Raiders, their fans and their gambling supporters had just put into the win column.

Coleman -- and replay official Rex Stuart, to a lesser extent -- proved conclusively that the replay concept has its human failings. While Coleman should have seen that New England quarterback Tom Brady was pulling the ball back to his chest after contemplating a pass and that Oakland cornerback Charles Woodson then knocked it free, he saw it differently and overruled the initial call on the field.

Instead of the Raiders recovering and running out the final 1:43 and advancing to the AFC title game with a 13-10 win, Coleman ruled Brady's fumble an incomplete pass and the Patriots regrouped for what wound up being a 16-13 victory in overtime.

It was a terrible and unforeseeable call that made or ruined many a person's day.