As some of you know, Skateboard Big Air was last night at X-Games 15 in L.A.

For some background, this sport has three major competitors: Danny Way, Bob Burnquist, and Jake Brown.

Danny Way is famous for two things. The first is jumping the Great Wall of China on his skateboard and the second is his performance in this event last year. He almost died during his first run, missed his second run because he was seeing the trainers in the quasi-ER they have set up in the Staples Center for X-Games, was told that he was done for the games and would have to get in an ambulance, disobeyed the doctor’s instructions, took his third run and actually landed some pretty basic stuff, took his third run and tried to do some better tricks, crashed in that run, took his fifth and final run and threw down a run that took the lead before he eventually lost the gold medal and ended with silver.

The man who took the gold from him was Bob Burnquist. He’s famous for winning gold medals. He was the two time defending champion going into last night. He’s this awesome dude from Brazil. He felt terrible after taking the gold out from under Danny Way last year to the point that he was crying when he hugged Way afterwards. If you think that emotion was unwarranted, watch the video of what Way did that night.

More on Burnquist later.

The third guy is Jake Brown. Brown is an Australian kid who is famous for his epic slam in this event two years ago. I’m sure you’ve seen it. In case you somehow missed it…

So, yeah… He actually won the silver medal that night because of an earlier run. Brown had never won the gold in this event. That is, before last night.

Here’s what happened. After a crash in practice Danny Way was unable to go and was put in the booth for the competition. Then, a complicated scoring system situation arose when Brown had a score of 94.00 for his third run. That was then tied by Burnquist with his forth run. Normally in these events the best single score wins. With a tie, the breaker is total score. Well, going into the last run, they both had the same totals as well. The third tiebreaker is 2nd best run, which Burnquist owned. This led Brown to try an insane run to try to take the gold. He fell trying to land the first ever 900 on the quarterpipe. Because the second tiebreaker is total and Brown’s total was damaged by falling in his last run, Burnquist only needed to not fall (or even fall while doing a better run) to seal his victory. Well, that’s not really what he did…

So, did Burnquist fall on purpose? He took a really safe fall, while trying a really safe trick, really early in a run where he didn’t need any tricks at all. For argument’s sake, let’s say he did. Did he do the right thing? Would you have done it?

On one hand, Burnquist (and Brown, and the announcers, and everyone else) knew that the judges had made some sort of mistake. Brown’s run was better but the judges scored them a tie. Tony Hawk (also in the booth) made a comment about how sometimes you end up on the good side of a judge’s mistake, and sometimes you don’t. Clearly, this was a bad night for Brown.

Burnquist had won the last two golds. He had given silvers to two guys who almost died getting them. Jake Brown had never won a gold at the X-Games, Burnquist had won six. Does that effect what he’s supposed to do?

Is the right thing to take the judging into your own hands when they mess it up? Help me out here people. I’m not sure what I would have done. But what Bob did sure took a hell of a lot of guts.

Guyinthecorner is an author here at spartyandfriends.com. He writes the NBA section, X-Games section, and contributes to College Basketball and MLB. He doesn’t watch hockey except when the circumstances are dire. He’s not sure how to rate Michael Phelps on the scale of athletes not only because he doesn’t directly compete against people, but because he is a fish. He doesn’t understand the hate for the 2002 National Champion Maryland Terrapins and wishes everybody would just shut up by now. He is known for having statistical formulas and might be Bill James or Joe Lunardi depending on who you ask. His identity is as hidden as many times over as the number of internet memes he employs in his comments. Some have called him “The Riddler.” He can be reached on Twitter at @GuyITC or at gitc@spartyandfriends.com. “GITC” is an acronym for guyinthecorner in case you aren’t that perceptive.

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