6 Pittsburgh Steelers who made the NFL rewrite its rules

Jerome Bettis  1996-2005

Certainly, one of the best runningbacks ever he finished with 13,662 yards. However, in fairness, this rule change had more to do with a referee not paying attention, or Jerome’s inability to call heads or tails as captain and nothing with how Jerome played the game of football.

In 1998 on Thanksgiving Day, the Detroit Lions hosted the Steelers. Giving fans extra excitement for the holiday game went to overtime. Thus inadvertently leading to one of the greatest controversies of all time in the NFL. As a captain, Jerome went out for the coin toss to determine who would receive the ball in overtime. Referee Phill Luckett instructed Bettis to call it in the air as standard practice in all coin flips. Bettis claims he called tails, Luckett said Bettis called heads. Audio seems to suggest he started calling heads; it sounded like hea…tails. Mid-call Jerome changed it to tails despite instructions from Coach Bill Cowher to call heads. So Luckett determined he called heads first. As a result, despite arguments from Bettis, Detroit won the toss obtaining the first overtime possession scoring a field goal, beating the Steelers 19-16.

One week after the game Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced a change to the coin flip, all captains need to choose before the actual coin flip. Hence the change caused the NCAA and even high schools to follow suit. While Not officially called the Bettis Rule, many have called it that.