Les Miles' team, LSU, is behind 24-23, with 0:10 left in the game, clock ticking, one time out, with the ball on the other team's (Auburn's) 23-yard line.

Normal humans would take the timeout, take the field goal, and win by 2 points at home.

Miles, instead, called a long pass to the corner of the end zone, caught for a touchdown with 0:03 on the clock. By the time the officials signaled "touchdown" to stop the game clock, it read 0:01, so had the play lasted just a fraction of a second longer, the game would have ended.

Note that LSU was down by one point.

If Miles takes the field goal and wins by two points, the story of the game is about how his #4-ranked team "barely escaped" with a home win against a lower-ranked conference rival with a last-second long-distance field goal. Miles gets second-guessed for the next week, but his team's secondary shot at the national championship remains intact.

Instead, Miles calls a long-shot pass play that, if successful, doesn't win the game any more than the field goal would. If the play fails, though, LSU loses the game and its shot at the BCS Championship.

The first way is good for the team but bad for Les Miles whether the field goal succeeds or not. The second play screws the team's entire season if it fails, but leaves Miles no more screwed than he was with the field goal, and has a small chance of succeeding and making him a hero.

Miles chose a small chance of not being a goat instead of a large chance of keeping his team's national championship hopes going. The fact that he succeeded on this gamble does not make him less of a jerk.