Unofficials

What the zebras giveth, the zebras also taketh away.

That's the hard lesson that this occasional betting man took away from a bizarre, woefully officiated Week 13 in the NFL.

I entered the week with a 12-game lead in my season-long football pool and now that I'm leaving it with that same lead intact, I've got the men in stripes to thank and to blame.

Cool your salivating maws, my dear Ad Board readers. I'm hip to Harvard's puritanical no-gambling policy and wouldn't presume to incriminate myself in print. I did not have financial relations with this pool. But let's just say I stand to win a cool 500 brownie points if I can maintain my position atop the standings for the rest of the season.

Things began auspiciously enough. Following Chris Berman's selection strategy, I went with the home-dog Detroit Lions in the Thanksgiving opener, getting two and one-half points against the favored Steelers.

But as the game headed into overtime in a 16-16 deadlock, my complacency waned. Barring a safety, the spread had gone out the window and the Lions would have to win outright to secure my bet.

Enter Phil Luckett, bless his heart. In the now-infamous coin toss, Luckett succumbed to a moment of aural hallucination and misheard Jerome Bettis's call of tails, awarding Detroit possession.

Three minutes and one generous facemask call later, Jason Hanson boomed a 42-yard game winner and I had one win under my belt, courtesy of some highly creative refereeing.

"What makes me mad is you scratch and fight for 60 minutes, and the guys in striped shirts decide it," said a positively righteous Bill Cowher. "There's just something wrong about that."

At the time, I found Cowher's naivete charming. Sure, the busted coin toss was the fluke to end all flukes, but once made, an official's call assumes the magnitude of divine revelation and griping, as Chuck Knoblauch taught us, is futile.

I proceeded to chow down on my cranberry sauce and stuffing with a light heart, secure in the conviction that, with luck like this, those dastardly men in stripes might be able to carry me through the entire week.

So far so good, until Sunday night and the Patriots-Bills tilt at Foxboro. I had Buffalo as three and one-half point underdogs and I was sitting pretty when Doug Flutie hit Andre Reed for a 21-17 lead with five minutes remaining.

If you don't immediately see the irony, read on.

Sitting tight in my dorm room, I watched Drew Bledsoe's climactic touchdown drive with an academic indifference characteristic of the sports bettor. Let the Patriots win it, I brashly told my roommate. At 24-21, they still don't cover the spread.

Sean Jefferson caught a desperation fourth-down pass falling out of bounds, and when the refs ruled that his feet had miraculously touched the ground while still in midair, I was cool as a cucumber.

Only later, ruing a win given away, did I realize precisely how the refs had abetted this bit of highway robbery. "Just give it to them," was how Flutie reported the sideline official's explanation of the call.

New England had a Hail Mary answered with a pass interference call that looked like manna straight from heaven and I remained unruffled. So what if pass interference never gets called on Hail Marys. Score, I thought, no sweat. That just makes things more interesting.

And when Ben Coates elevated in the back of the endzone to snatch Bledsoe's one-yard touchdown toss, my attitude was bemused at best. Typical, I reasoned. Hardluck Boston fans get another week of falsely inflated hopes before the ultimate demise.

And then came the extra point.

Buffalo found the officiating so objectionable that it warranted boycotting the point-after. New England lined up 11 men against the ghost of an absent defense, and Adam Vinatieri trotted in untouched for two points. That's right, two points. 25-21. The Patriots covered the spread.

Resentful after my brilliant underdog pick had fallen by the wayside, I blamed the greedy Foxboro fans and their incessant "Go for Two" chant. Yuk it up, I fumed. Two years from now you'll all be pounding it down I-84 to Hartford to watch the Ex-Patriots.

And now I get to play the waiting game. My lead is still 12 games, but four weeks from now, when I'm sweating out the Panthers-Colts game because those 500 brownie points hang in the balance, don't think I'll forget how the officials tainted those two games. If I should come out on the short end, I suppose I'll protest the pool and argue for a revision of the standings.

That, or I'll tell my "bookie" that I meant to say Carolina even though he heard Indianapolis.