The Stupor Bowl
I am quite a sports fan, and (American) football is without a doubt my favorite team sport to watch. Funny enough, I despised football until the Baltimore Ravens made their Super Bowl bid back in 2000...and I have been hooked ever since. Go figure: watching football and understanding the rules are necessary to enjoying it. Now, I look forward to the Super Bowl all year.
This year, I was torn as to which team I wanted to win. I am a diehard Ravens fan; cut me and I bleed purple. Our chief rivals are the Pittsburgh Steelers. Easy, right? Root for the Seahawks! But I have this annoying tendency to take under my wing the local teams, when they do well. Pittsburgh is a couple hours away, local enough. Also, they are in the same conference, same division, as the Ravens, and it's always nice to see oneself represented, however broad the classification.
So I really didn't know who to root for. Bobby was actually leaning towards the Steelers. I balked, though: As much as I respect--dare I say even like?--some of the individual players for the Steelers, their fans (in Baltimore anyway) are disgustingly obnoxious. I know the stereotypes of Bal'morons, surely: We are a bunch of pea-brained, blue-collar steel workers with funny accents, a penchant for seafood, and a tendency toward such grammatical travesties as the plural "you" ("yous guys") and ending every sentence in "hon." But through it all, I have always thought that Baltimore has respectful--if not classy--fans. Our football team was literally stolen from us in the middle of the night, in secret, in 1981 and shipped to Indianapolis. It took fifteen years to see football again in Baltimore, and it is no secret that the NFL didn't want us to have a team. We are grateful and almost reverant in our football.
Steelers fans, though--in Baltimore, as a general rule (I have no idea how Steelers fans behave in Pittsburgh, where they belong, or elsewhere in the world)--tend to be pushy and obnoxious. Go into a bar and observe the quiet celebrations of the Ravens' fans, and I guarantee you that the one guy shouting and making a scene is wearing black and gold. Observe the fact that Steelers fans who live in Maryland entertain the delusion that Jessup is "Steelers Country"...and Jessup is twenty miles south of Baltimore. You're going the wrong way, hon; Pittsburgh is to the north. And when you're near enough to hike in a day to a team's stadium, something tells me that this is the home team, not the team one hundred miles away.
So Bobby and I both decided to support the Seahawks simply because the number of fairweather Steelers fans in Baltimore suddenly wearing their Ward jerseys and waving Steelers flags had sickeningly burgeoned. (Hey, I wear my Ray Lewis jersey and the Ravens suck...and it's been worn so many times that most of the lettering has come off! Funny how I didn't see all this Steelers crap when they were only a wild card in the playoffs with barely a shred of hope of success.)
Most of all, though--and this has been true of every Super Bowl except (of course) XXXV when the Ravens won--I wish for some entertaining ads, good food and company, and a good, fair game.
Some will argue, I'm sure that it was a good game: In a sporting event often prone to insurmountable gaps and embarrassing domination of one team over the other, the game stayed pretty close and neither team was ever "out" of it. As for fair? I don't see how anyone can argue that.
It breaks my heart because I love football, particularly NFL football; I live in a city where we never imagined having another football team much less winning a Super Bowl. To me, nothing is more fun than to try to puzzle one's way out of impossible situations. ("Do they go for it on fourth? Or try for a long field goal?? Argh!") But he who coined the name No Fun League for the NFL wasn't far off track...although I dare suggest that No Fair League might be better. This year, the officiation in the NFL was simply egregious, and I dare someone to tell me that the poor officiation in this league didn't lead to different game outcomes than would be from fair judgment. The Ravens have always faced the wrath of the referees, although fans often hesitate to speak of it lest we be seen as "whiny" or making excuses. But this year, time after time, the NFL was apologizing for this erroneous call or that erroneous call...and there is an interesting correlation between these calls and who gets favored in next week's game. Consider when the NFL apologized to the Detroit Lions for cheating them of something...and the next week, the Lions played the Ravens, and the officiation was so bad that one referee made a call against the Ravens with his back turned to the play. He judged "unsportsmanlike conduct" based on the crowd's reaction, and after hurting Lions' fans the week before, apparently, that was enough for him to throw a flag.
The officiation at the Super Bowl was terrible. I do not pretend to know all of the rules in a game where, in an attempt to remove subjectivity, ironically, the rule book has become one of inane nuance and stipulation requiring just that, but I have a good idea about the rules, and my sister and husband know even more than me, and we saw calls being made that we were all at a loss to explain. That the commentators, outright, said were wrong, and the commentators are not prone to speak out against the league.
Is is suspicious that, in the AFC championship, the Steelers had an interception overturned that should not have been? That they almost lost the game because of a bad call? That the Steelers' Joey Porter accused the NFL of "wanting Peyton Manning to have the championship more than them?" That the next game--the Super Bowl--the Steelers could do nothing wrong while the Seahawks were called--under the guise of some incomprehensible accusation--of tackling?
Or that having Jerome Bettis retire after winning a Super Bowl in his home town made a Good Story (tm) whereas the Seahawks really had no special human interest?
I find myself prepared to never watch my favorite sport again. I simply cannot stand to watch a game that is won before the coin is even tossed. I like to think of myself as a fair person. The Colts were my Super Bowl pick and my favorite team to win after the Ravens were out of the picture, but I was glad that they lost to the Steelers after that terrible call at the AFC championship almost threw the game unfairly in their favor. So it's not an issue of which team won but how that team won it.
Sadly, players for whom I have great respect--such as Jerome Bettis--really have nothing to be proud of. They didn't deserve to win that game. The Seahawks played better than them but had almost all of their major plays called back on silly or entirely fictitious penalties. Had the Steelers won fairly, even my dislike of their obnoxious fans couldn't make me unhappy for the players who deserve to win and have worked hard to do so. I am just as moved by Good Stories (tm) of players come home to win in the place where they grew up; of second-year quarterbacks leading a team to a victory like some cheap, B-rate sports flick. But not when you have to watch other players have their dreams shattered because they were thought less worthy to win.
Incidentally, I am not crazy or paranoid--not about this anyway--and Michael Smith of espn.com echoes much of what I have to say about this...indeed, much of what Baltimore fans have been saying quietly amongst ourselves for years.
DETROIT -- Three weeks ago, after the Steelers held on to upset Indianapolis, Joey Porter was unhappy about the overturning of Troy
Polamalu's fourth-quarter interception that could have sealed the win much earlier. Believing that deep down the league preferred Peyton Manning and the Colts to win, Porter publicly criticized the game officials, asking them not to "take the game from us."
Well, the Steelers can call it even now, as the officials who performed well enough throughout the season to earn the privilege of working Super Bowl XL performed Sunday as though they were trying to make it up to the Steelers by giving them the game -- not just any game, but the biggest game. And, yes, this time the other guys, the Seahawks, cried conspiracy, only not quite as loudly as Porter.
"You know, that's what happens when the world is against you," one Seahawk said after the 21-10 loss at Ford/Heinz Field. "No one wanted us to win. They wanted Jerome Bettis to win and go out a hero, and they got it."
Seattle had its share of goats: in particular, tight end Jerramy Stevens, who dropped four balls, and kicker Josh Brown, who missed two field-goal attempts. Almost to a man, the Seahawks pointed the blame finger at themselves for converting only one of three red zone attempts (when they had been the best in the league in that area, scoring a touchdown on 71.7 percent of their trips inside the 20-yard line); for allowing Ben Roethlisberger to improvise and complete a 37-yard pass to game MVP Hines Ward to the 1; for giving up a 75-yard touchdown run to Willie Parker; and for getting beaten by a trick play on Antwaan Randle El's pass to fellow receiver Ward for a touchdown, a first in Super Bowl history. If you read between the lines, though, they pretty much spelled out in bold letters that they had plenty of help in handing Pittsburgh its fifth Lombardi Trophy.
Namely, the boys in black and white.
"Those things are out of our control," Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said of the three major penalties that helped change the game completely. Not saying the outcome of the game would have been any different, but for sure it would have been a different game. "That's the way [the officials] called them," Hasselbeck continued. "The Steelers played well enough to win tonight, and we didn't. They should get credit. It's disappointing, it's hard, but what are you going to do?"
Here's what referee Bill Leavy's crew did, point blank: It robbed Seattle. The Seahawks could have played better, sure. They could have done more to overcome the poor officiating. We understand that those things happen and all, but even with all the points Seattle left on the field, there's a good chance the Seahawks would have scored more than the Steelers if the officials had let the players play.
In the biggest game of the year, the biggest game in sports, even, the officials were just a little too visible. In that regard, the Super Bowl provided a fitting conclusion to a postseason packed with pitiful performances by the game's third team. There were incorrect down-by-contact rulings in both NFC wild-card games; a touchdown that could have gone either way and should have gone the other way -- in favor of Tampa Bay -- in the Bucs' loss to the Redskins; the Patriots got no love in Denver in being hit with a bogus pass interference penalty and not catching a break on Champ Bailey's fumble at the goal line that looked as though it could have been a touchback; and, of course, the Polamalu play.
Still, what happened to the Seahawks wasn't the same as, say, New England going into Denver and playing badly (five turnovers) on top of the bad calls. Seattle gained almost 400 yards and turned it over just once.
You see, you can spend weeks -- and we did; two, in fact -- analyzing and dissecting matchups and giving each team the edge in certain areas and trying to figure out how the game is going to play out, but the two things you can't account for are turnovers and officials. The latter were the X-factor Sunday. Edge: Steelers.
It actually was a fairly clean game from a penalty standpoint, without a whole lot of yellow on the field -- 10 accepted penalties between the teams. Seven were against the Seahawks, though, a team that tied with Indianapolis for the second-fewest penalties (94) in the regular season. But those calls against the Seahawks stuck out like the Space Needle on the Seattle skyline.
Consider: The Seahawks lost 161 yards to penalties when you combine the penalty yards (70) and the plays the flags wiped out (91). By halftime alone, when it trailed 7-3, Seattle had had 73 hard-earned yards and a touchdown eliminated.
Hasselbeck hit Darrell Jackson with an apparent 16-yard scoring pass in the first quarter, but the play came back when Jackson was called for offensive pass interference. It was a touch foul. Jackson extended his arm, yes, but both players were fighting for position, and he didn't create any separation by doing so. It was like a referee calling a hand-check in a key moment of Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
The Seahawks had to settle for three instead of seven.
Still, that was early, and that one didn't change the game as much as did a holding call against Sean Locklear early in the fourth quarter with Pittsburgh leading 14-10. That one wiped out an 18-yard catch by Stevens that would have taken the ball to the 1. Locklear supposedly held Clark Haggans, so instead of first-and-goal at the 1 and the chance to complete a 98-yard touchdown drive and take a three-point lead, Seattle faced first-and-20 at the 29.
Three plays later, Ike Taylor picked off a Hasselbeck pass, and Hasselbeck went low to make the tackle on Taylor's return and was called for a 15-yard personal foul for a low block. The Steelers set up shop at their 44. That one right there made no sense.
Pittsburgh likes to run its trick plays in the middle of the field. Boom! Four plays later, from Seattle's 43, Randle El took a reverse and threw a sweet strike on the run to Ward. It was 21-10, and that was all she wrote. Everyone knows how important it is to play Pittsburgh with a lead or with the score tied. The Steelers don't lose when they're up by 11.
Eleven just so happens to be the total points taken away by bogus calls. Some penalties meant points; others meant field position. A holding call in the second quarter negated Peter Warrick's 34-yard punt return that would have started Seattle in Pittsburgh territory.
By contrast, the Steelers might have gotten a break on Roethlisberger's 1-yard touchdown plunge on third-and-goal in the second quarter. Leavy reviewed the play under the booth's orders, since it occurred inside the two-minute mark, and while still photos of an airborne Roethlisberger showed that the ball might have broken the plane of the goal line, he landed short of it and reached the ball over. It was close. Head linesman Mark Hittner didn't seem so sure of it, hesitating before signaling touchdown.
"I don't think he scored," Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said.
It was that kind of evening for the Seahawks, who represent a town where residents know all too well that when it rains, it pours. If having what seemed like 90 percent of the 68,200 in attendance waving Terrible Towels wasn't enough to make Seattle feel as though it was playing on the road, the officials called it as though the Seahawks actually were.
Pittsburgh capitalized on its opportunities. And guys like Bill Cowher, Ward, Dan Rooney and The Bus are all very deserving of a championship -- and it's nice to see them win one -- but it would have been better had it not happened like this. It's like the Seahawks said: Not taking anything away from the Steelers, but keep it real.
"We had a touchdown taken away from us, the first one we scored," said Hasselbeck, who was measured in his words but clear in his frustration, "and then we had the ball at the 1-yard line, they called a penalty on us. That was unfortunate."
"I thought they were offside [on the play Locklear was called for holding]," center Robbie Tobeck said. "I thought we had a free play on because they had two guys come across. You know, that's the game. In a game, there's situations you have to overcome, and all night long we didn't do a good job of overcoming those things, and that's something we've done all year."
In the offseason, 31 teams will be back at the drawing board, evaluating what they need to do to knock off the Steelers in the fall. After the postseason they just had, Mike Pereira and the NFL's crew of officials would be wise to take a long, hard look at themselves. It's a real shame when, on the game's biggest stage, the major players aren't players at all. We saw too much of the third team in Super Bowl XL and not enough Seahawks and Steelers.
This year, I was torn as to which team I wanted to win. I am a diehard Ravens fan; cut me and I bleed purple. Our chief rivals are the Pittsburgh Steelers. Easy, right? Root for the Seahawks! But I have this annoying tendency to take under my wing the local teams, when they do well. Pittsburgh is a couple hours away, local enough. Also, they are in the same conference, same division, as the Ravens, and it's always nice to see oneself represented, however broad the classification.
So I really didn't know who to root for. Bobby was actually leaning towards the Steelers. I balked, though: As much as I respect--dare I say even like?--some of the individual players for the Steelers, their fans (in Baltimore anyway) are disgustingly obnoxious. I know the stereotypes of Bal'morons, surely: We are a bunch of pea-brained, blue-collar steel workers with funny accents, a penchant for seafood, and a tendency toward such grammatical travesties as the plural "you" ("yous guys") and ending every sentence in "hon." But through it all, I have always thought that Baltimore has respectful--if not classy--fans. Our football team was literally stolen from us in the middle of the night, in secret, in 1981 and shipped to Indianapolis. It took fifteen years to see football again in Baltimore, and it is no secret that the NFL didn't want us to have a team. We are grateful and almost reverant in our football.
Steelers fans, though--in Baltimore, as a general rule (I have no idea how Steelers fans behave in Pittsburgh, where they belong, or elsewhere in the world)--tend to be pushy and obnoxious. Go into a bar and observe the quiet celebrations of the Ravens' fans, and I guarantee you that the one guy shouting and making a scene is wearing black and gold. Observe the fact that Steelers fans who live in Maryland entertain the delusion that Jessup is "Steelers Country"...and Jessup is twenty miles south of Baltimore. You're going the wrong way, hon; Pittsburgh is to the north. And when you're near enough to hike in a day to a team's stadium, something tells me that this is the home team, not the team one hundred miles away.
So Bobby and I both decided to support the Seahawks simply because the number of fairweather Steelers fans in Baltimore suddenly wearing their Ward jerseys and waving Steelers flags had sickeningly burgeoned. (Hey, I wear my Ray Lewis jersey and the Ravens suck...and it's been worn so many times that most of the lettering has come off! Funny how I didn't see all this Steelers crap when they were only a wild card in the playoffs with barely a shred of hope of success.)
Most of all, though--and this has been true of every Super Bowl except (of course) XXXV when the Ravens won--I wish for some entertaining ads, good food and company, and a good, fair game.
Some will argue, I'm sure that it was a good game: In a sporting event often prone to insurmountable gaps and embarrassing domination of one team over the other, the game stayed pretty close and neither team was ever "out" of it. As for fair? I don't see how anyone can argue that.
It breaks my heart because I love football, particularly NFL football; I live in a city where we never imagined having another football team much less winning a Super Bowl. To me, nothing is more fun than to try to puzzle one's way out of impossible situations. ("Do they go for it on fourth? Or try for a long field goal?? Argh!") But he who coined the name No Fun League for the NFL wasn't far off track...although I dare suggest that No Fair League might be better. This year, the officiation in the NFL was simply egregious, and I dare someone to tell me that the poor officiation in this league didn't lead to different game outcomes than would be from fair judgment. The Ravens have always faced the wrath of the referees, although fans often hesitate to speak of it lest we be seen as "whiny" or making excuses. But this year, time after time, the NFL was apologizing for this erroneous call or that erroneous call...and there is an interesting correlation between these calls and who gets favored in next week's game. Consider when the NFL apologized to the Detroit Lions for cheating them of something...and the next week, the Lions played the Ravens, and the officiation was so bad that one referee made a call against the Ravens with his back turned to the play. He judged "unsportsmanlike conduct" based on the crowd's reaction, and after hurting Lions' fans the week before, apparently, that was enough for him to throw a flag.
The officiation at the Super Bowl was terrible. I do not pretend to know all of the rules in a game where, in an attempt to remove subjectivity, ironically, the rule book has become one of inane nuance and stipulation requiring just that, but I have a good idea about the rules, and my sister and husband know even more than me, and we saw calls being made that we were all at a loss to explain. That the commentators, outright, said were wrong, and the commentators are not prone to speak out against the league.
Is is suspicious that, in the AFC championship, the Steelers had an interception overturned that should not have been? That they almost lost the game because of a bad call? That the Steelers' Joey Porter accused the NFL of "wanting Peyton Manning to have the championship more than them?" That the next game--the Super Bowl--the Steelers could do nothing wrong while the Seahawks were called--under the guise of some incomprehensible accusation--of tackling?
Or that having Jerome Bettis retire after winning a Super Bowl in his home town made a Good Story (tm) whereas the Seahawks really had no special human interest?
I find myself prepared to never watch my favorite sport again. I simply cannot stand to watch a game that is won before the coin is even tossed. I like to think of myself as a fair person. The Colts were my Super Bowl pick and my favorite team to win after the Ravens were out of the picture, but I was glad that they lost to the Steelers after that terrible call at the AFC championship almost threw the game unfairly in their favor. So it's not an issue of which team won but how that team won it.
Sadly, players for whom I have great respect--such as Jerome Bettis--really have nothing to be proud of. They didn't deserve to win that game. The Seahawks played better than them but had almost all of their major plays called back on silly or entirely fictitious penalties. Had the Steelers won fairly, even my dislike of their obnoxious fans couldn't make me unhappy for the players who deserve to win and have worked hard to do so. I am just as moved by Good Stories (tm) of players come home to win in the place where they grew up; of second-year quarterbacks leading a team to a victory like some cheap, B-rate sports flick. But not when you have to watch other players have their dreams shattered because they were thought less worthy to win.
Incidentally, I am not crazy or paranoid--not about this anyway--and Michael Smith of espn.com echoes much of what I have to say about this...indeed, much of what Baltimore fans have been saying quietly amongst ourselves for years.
DETROIT -- Three weeks ago, after the Steelers held on to upset Indianapolis, Joey Porter was unhappy about the overturning of Troy
Polamalu's fourth-quarter interception that could have sealed the win much earlier. Believing that deep down the league preferred Peyton Manning and the Colts to win, Porter publicly criticized the game officials, asking them not to "take the game from us."
Well, the Steelers can call it even now, as the officials who performed well enough throughout the season to earn the privilege of working Super Bowl XL performed Sunday as though they were trying to make it up to the Steelers by giving them the game -- not just any game, but the biggest game. And, yes, this time the other guys, the Seahawks, cried conspiracy, only not quite as loudly as Porter.
"You know, that's what happens when the world is against you," one Seahawk said after the 21-10 loss at Ford/Heinz Field. "No one wanted us to win. They wanted Jerome Bettis to win and go out a hero, and they got it."
Seattle had its share of goats: in particular, tight end Jerramy Stevens, who dropped four balls, and kicker Josh Brown, who missed two field-goal attempts. Almost to a man, the Seahawks pointed the blame finger at themselves for converting only one of three red zone attempts (when they had been the best in the league in that area, scoring a touchdown on 71.7 percent of their trips inside the 20-yard line); for allowing Ben Roethlisberger to improvise and complete a 37-yard pass to game MVP Hines Ward to the 1; for giving up a 75-yard touchdown run to Willie Parker; and for getting beaten by a trick play on Antwaan Randle El's pass to fellow receiver Ward for a touchdown, a first in Super Bowl history. If you read between the lines, though, they pretty much spelled out in bold letters that they had plenty of help in handing Pittsburgh its fifth Lombardi Trophy.
Namely, the boys in black and white.
"Those things are out of our control," Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said of the three major penalties that helped change the game completely. Not saying the outcome of the game would have been any different, but for sure it would have been a different game. "That's the way [the officials] called them," Hasselbeck continued. "The Steelers played well enough to win tonight, and we didn't. They should get credit. It's disappointing, it's hard, but what are you going to do?"
Here's what referee Bill Leavy's crew did, point blank: It robbed Seattle. The Seahawks could have played better, sure. They could have done more to overcome the poor officiating. We understand that those things happen and all, but even with all the points Seattle left on the field, there's a good chance the Seahawks would have scored more than the Steelers if the officials had let the players play.
In the biggest game of the year, the biggest game in sports, even, the officials were just a little too visible. In that regard, the Super Bowl provided a fitting conclusion to a postseason packed with pitiful performances by the game's third team. There were incorrect down-by-contact rulings in both NFC wild-card games; a touchdown that could have gone either way and should have gone the other way -- in favor of Tampa Bay -- in the Bucs' loss to the Redskins; the Patriots got no love in Denver in being hit with a bogus pass interference penalty and not catching a break on Champ Bailey's fumble at the goal line that looked as though it could have been a touchback; and, of course, the Polamalu play.
Still, what happened to the Seahawks wasn't the same as, say, New England going into Denver and playing badly (five turnovers) on top of the bad calls. Seattle gained almost 400 yards and turned it over just once.
You see, you can spend weeks -- and we did; two, in fact -- analyzing and dissecting matchups and giving each team the edge in certain areas and trying to figure out how the game is going to play out, but the two things you can't account for are turnovers and officials. The latter were the X-factor Sunday. Edge: Steelers.
It actually was a fairly clean game from a penalty standpoint, without a whole lot of yellow on the field -- 10 accepted penalties between the teams. Seven were against the Seahawks, though, a team that tied with Indianapolis for the second-fewest penalties (94) in the regular season. But those calls against the Seahawks stuck out like the Space Needle on the Seattle skyline.
Consider: The Seahawks lost 161 yards to penalties when you combine the penalty yards (70) and the plays the flags wiped out (91). By halftime alone, when it trailed 7-3, Seattle had had 73 hard-earned yards and a touchdown eliminated.
Hasselbeck hit Darrell Jackson with an apparent 16-yard scoring pass in the first quarter, but the play came back when Jackson was called for offensive pass interference. It was a touch foul. Jackson extended his arm, yes, but both players were fighting for position, and he didn't create any separation by doing so. It was like a referee calling a hand-check in a key moment of Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
The Seahawks had to settle for three instead of seven.
Still, that was early, and that one didn't change the game as much as did a holding call against Sean Locklear early in the fourth quarter with Pittsburgh leading 14-10. That one wiped out an 18-yard catch by Stevens that would have taken the ball to the 1. Locklear supposedly held Clark Haggans, so instead of first-and-goal at the 1 and the chance to complete a 98-yard touchdown drive and take a three-point lead, Seattle faced first-and-20 at the 29.
Three plays later, Ike Taylor picked off a Hasselbeck pass, and Hasselbeck went low to make the tackle on Taylor's return and was called for a 15-yard personal foul for a low block. The Steelers set up shop at their 44. That one right there made no sense.
Pittsburgh likes to run its trick plays in the middle of the field. Boom! Four plays later, from Seattle's 43, Randle El took a reverse and threw a sweet strike on the run to Ward. It was 21-10, and that was all she wrote. Everyone knows how important it is to play Pittsburgh with a lead or with the score tied. The Steelers don't lose when they're up by 11.
Eleven just so happens to be the total points taken away by bogus calls. Some penalties meant points; others meant field position. A holding call in the second quarter negated Peter Warrick's 34-yard punt return that would have started Seattle in Pittsburgh territory.
By contrast, the Steelers might have gotten a break on Roethlisberger's 1-yard touchdown plunge on third-and-goal in the second quarter. Leavy reviewed the play under the booth's orders, since it occurred inside the two-minute mark, and while still photos of an airborne Roethlisberger showed that the ball might have broken the plane of the goal line, he landed short of it and reached the ball over. It was close. Head linesman Mark Hittner didn't seem so sure of it, hesitating before signaling touchdown.
"I don't think he scored," Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said.
It was that kind of evening for the Seahawks, who represent a town where residents know all too well that when it rains, it pours. If having what seemed like 90 percent of the 68,200 in attendance waving Terrible Towels wasn't enough to make Seattle feel as though it was playing on the road, the officials called it as though the Seahawks actually were.
Pittsburgh capitalized on its opportunities. And guys like Bill Cowher, Ward, Dan Rooney and The Bus are all very deserving of a championship -- and it's nice to see them win one -- but it would have been better had it not happened like this. It's like the Seahawks said: Not taking anything away from the Steelers, but keep it real.
"We had a touchdown taken away from us, the first one we scored," said Hasselbeck, who was measured in his words but clear in his frustration, "and then we had the ball at the 1-yard line, they called a penalty on us. That was unfortunate."
"I thought they were offside [on the play Locklear was called for holding]," center Robbie Tobeck said. "I thought we had a free play on because they had two guys come across. You know, that's the game. In a game, there's situations you have to overcome, and all night long we didn't do a good job of overcoming those things, and that's something we've done all year."
In the offseason, 31 teams will be back at the drawing board, evaluating what they need to do to knock off the Steelers in the fall. After the postseason they just had, Mike Pereira and the NFL's crew of officials would be wise to take a long, hard look at themselves. It's a real shame when, on the game's biggest stage, the major players aren't players at all. We saw too much of the third team in Super Bowl XL and not enough Seahawks and Steelers.