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I find this incredible.  After over 12,800 NFL games on the books, today’s Steelers-Chargers game ended with a score that has never before been recorded.  One touchdown and a field goal gave the Chargers 10 points.  A safety and 3 field goals gave the Steelers 11 points.

While the 11-10 finish is noteworthy, the score was very nearly 17-10 or 18-10.  On the last play of the game, Troy Polamalu appeared to score a touchdown after blocking a lateral pass, recovering the ball, and reaching the end zone with it.  However, upon review, the referees ruled that one of the series of lateral passes preceding the touchdown was, in fact, an illegal forward pass.  This meant that the ball was dead and the play was over before the touchdown was scored.  According to this article, however, after the game, the referees changed their minds and decided that the touchdown should have counted after all, but it was too late to change the score.

While it would have been nice to see the Steelers win by more than a 1-point margin, the fact that the game ended in a heretofore unrecorded score makes it much more interesting.  I wonder what other mathematically possible, relatively low score combinations haven’t been recorded.  Actually, I’d be interested in seeing a histogram representing the frequency with which all mathematically possible scores are recorded.  It seems like this type of data should be available on the internet, but in about 1 minute of googling, I didn’t find it.  Let this stand as a challenge to those of you who consider yourselves internet search experts.  Leave any interesting results in the comments.