Did Buccaneers GM Bruce Allen Rig the Coin Toss?

Now this is interesting. As we've previously reported at FanHouse, the Cleveland Browns received the third overall draft pick via a coin toss with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, meaning the Browns pick ahead of the Bucs in the first round of this year's NFL draft. As we've also reported, losing that coin toss and picking fourth could turn out to give the Bucs the player they want -- Georgia Tech receiver Calvin Johnson -- for $7 million less than they would have had to pay him if they had won the coin toss and picked third. So in a sense, losing the toss might have turned out to be very good, from a business perspective and a salary cap perspective, for the Bucs.

And now SI.com's Peter King reports that the Bucs controlled everything about that coin toss:

There was almost a mini-scandal in the coin flip for the third pick in the draft. The Bucs and Browns finished tied for the third pick, because their opponents' won-loss records were identical. So Friday morning, Savage and Tampa Bay GM Bruce Allen met in a Westin Hotel conference room to break the tie for the third pick of the draft. Imagine the significance here.
Allen came into the room with a coin he wanted to use, one from a military base in Florida. That was fine with Savage. League officials Joel Bussert and Ken Fiore ran it. Allen called heads. And when the coin went up in the air, Allen shouted, "Wait! Wait!'' The coin was plucked out of the air. And Allen said, "What are we going to do, let it fall to the floor or catch it and flip it over on your hand?'' Let it fall, he was told. He called heads again. It came up tails.

So Allen provided a special coin, Allen decided whether to call heads or tails, and Allen was obsessed with knowing whether the coin would fall to the ground or be caught in the air and turned over. Gee, does it sound like Allen knew whether heads or tails was coming up? And then it turns out that the result of the toss saved Allen's team $7 million?

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I'm also not so sure Johnson will be around with the fourth pick, but this is just strange. If the NFL is going to use a coin flip for something so important that it could mean $7 million to a team, shouldn't it ensure that the coin flip is fair?