Super Bowl XL

Gut feeling I got while brushing my teeth today -- Seahawks by ten.

Dickson, that's just last night's burritos talking. Steelers all the way. I make no point predictions, just a prayer for victory.

Go Steelers!!!

As a Die Hard Pittsburgh Steeler fan and 'burgh native.

GO STEELERS!!!


- rwmega

Steelers! Bettis needs that ring, baby.

Stillers indeed, baby. One for the Thumb.

Is Bradshaw and Swann playing? If not then it's no thumb.

Tom Brady should have said no.

Steelers by 6.

Gosh looks like a little more crappy officiating. It didnt look like Ben made it in to me. Hopefully the second half picks up. I mean I like defensive football as much as the next guy but this game is a little boring. Maybe its just the fact that I dont like either team and have no vested interest in rooting for one team over the other.

I'm still bitter about the Colts...

I didn't think he made it in but it was too close to call so you can't really overturn it. I thought the pass interference call on Jackson was lame. Minor push off but I don't think the Steeler DB would make the play.

I like defensive football too but it's been mistakes by the Seahawks and so-so defense by the Steelers. Nothing exciting. Seattle should be up by 10+ by now.

The Stones should retire. I thought they sucked when I saw them in 94 and they aren't much better now. If they wanted to dust off some skeletons I would rather see a medley of Mowtown stars with a closing of Eminem.

Yawn. What a boring Super Bowl. Sure, there were a couple of exciting plays, but it was so mistake prone and sloppy.

Congrats to the Steelers and their fans, though. Amazing that Big Ben is only in his second year.

-- There was more pushing on Keenan McCardell's first touchdown in the Bucs' Super Bowl than there was on that play to Jackson, and there was no flag thrown there. That was a cheap call.

-- So was the call on Hasselbeck on the tackle on his interception. How can someone attemting to make a tackle be called for an illegal block?!?

-- Phantom holding call that took the Seahawks off the one-yard line and changed the entire complexion of the game. Looked like a clean play to me.

-- Could the Steelers score thanks to more fluke plays? Roethlisberger tosses up a prayer that gets caught, first and goal from the one. Parker busts a big run after being contained most of the half. Wide receiver tosses a touchdown pass. Other than that, the Steelers really didn't do anything on offense.

-- Horrible clock management by the Seahawks at the end of the first half. There was no excuse for that having to be a 54-yard attempt.

-- And hey, make those two field goals, Seattle, and that fourth quarter is entirely different.

-- Finally, Bud Light wins the commercial competition hands down.

Parker's run = not a fluke play

the reverse TD pass = not a fluke play

ben's cross-field pass = not really a fluke play either

Corrected that for ya.


GO STEELERS! Don't give a shit about boring this, officiating that. The Steelers won, and that's all I care about. Ben was due for an "off" game, but fortunately the defense and running game were good enough to hold on, and he made some plays when he absolutely had to. Good luck to Bettis. The team will miss him next year. And if I were the Seahawks, I'd draft a TE this year and get rid of Stevens. He sucks, and he looks like a total ass now.

This just in, total liquidation of premature parade material purchases! All floats, confetti and entertainers must go!

Yeah, with playing like that, the Seahawks didn't even deserve to be in the Super Bowl. Their clock management at the ends of both halves was atrocious.

Ahh--it feels good to see the Steelers win again. You gotta love a club that's only had two coaches in your lifetime. It could have been a better game on both sides, but what the hell. When I saw Franco waving his Terrible Towel at the beginning of the game, I don't think that he would have quibbled about "One more for the thumb!"

Clock management was horrible, but anyone who thinks bad officiating didn't matter is full of shit. Phantom holding call, phantom pass interference, a diving touchdown that was obviously stopped before the line. Too close to call? Roth is down and extended his arms and the ball afterwards. Not hard to call at all. Almost as bad as the infamous tuck rule from the Raiders/Pats game. Not that I should care since niether team means a shit to me, but I tire of seeing bad officiating and ticky tack fouls ruin games. Especially when these things seem to go in favor of point spreads so often. (No, I'm not calling conspiracy, just saying.)

I also would say that regardless of oversaturation, Bud Lite didn't when the Ad Bowl. Fed Ex did. They had cavemen, dinosuars, violence, death and an asshole boss. What more do you need?
Loser goes to Dove for their self esteem campaign. It's officially man day. It's supposed to be misogyny in the ads. Keep that shit on Lifetime until after the game is over. You can start broadcasting that during Grey's Anatomy. How can I get drunk and beat my wife while you're telling fat chicks that they're pretty?

I say he scored the touchdown. The edge of the ball just barely broke the plane for a millisecond before the defender pushed him back.

A crappy halftime show for a crappy Superbowl. Congrats to the Steelers. Nice to see Bettis and Hines Ward get a trophy they deserved it. Seahawks deserve electric shock treatment for their bad hands and silly play. Soft to the end.

The game was meh. I mean, it's fun for the Steelers and all, but like others stated above, the MVP for Pittsburgh is the referee, and no one else. Even if the QB Ben whatever-his-name-is really made a TD, the number of fake penalties inflicted to Seattle leading to big plays by the Steelers is too much to call it non-consequential.

yup. i don't understand the uproar about this play. it was a TD. do people know the rules of breaking the plane? everyone i watched the game with thought it wasn't a TD because they think it's like hockey where the puck needs to totally go across the crease. as long as any part of the football hit's the white line it's a TD. it doesn't matter that roethlisberger didn't actually land in the endzone either! the replays clearly paused it at a point where you could see roethlisberger had about half of the football across the line. the problem i had with the play was the ref at first said big ben was short of the goal line only to then reverse his own call. what made him decide to change his mind? after roeth was down he reached the ball over again. was this what made him decide to change his call? if he went with his initial decision i don't think they would've reversed the call under review. they probably would've said there wasn't enough visual evidence to overrule the ruling on the field due to the shot being on a slight angle.

jackson's inference call was so ticky tac, terrible call. you gotta let that kind of shit slide. i didn't really have a problem with the holding call but i'm sure there were similar "holds" throughout the game that went as no calls. what the hell was up with that hasselbeck illegal block? it wasn't like he picked someone off. he was making a tackle! what a sloppy game. roethlisberger was terrible, the seahawks had too many drops, the clock management at the end of the 1st half was disgraceful. i thought holmgren should've considered kicking a field goal when there was 30 or seconds left in the game. he was pretty much allowing the clock to run off. his playcalling at the end of the game was dreadful. there was 34 sec left in the game when the hawks spiked the ball at the steelers 26 yard line. at this point every pass had to be thrown into the endzone. they were already in field goal range and picking up a few extra yards shouldn't have been an option. so what do the hawks do? they throw a pass to alexander by the sidelines that luckily was dropped. then on 3rd down they pass it to stevens for a 3 yard gain which in the process burned about 20 seconds off the clock. beautiful! neither team deserved to win the game. did anyone else besides me have a problem with the romanticizing of the lombardi trophy? i was getting creeped out when holmgren was craddling it like it was his grand child. it looked like cowher wanted to make love to the damn thing! nice job by abc showing it with about 90% of the steelers players. i guess it wasn't too difficult to tell who they wanted to win.

WORST PLAYOFFS EVER!

Sort of sums up the game.

The ads were fun though.

It was an awful game on all levels. Steelers played like shit. The Seahawks looked confused at key moments and the officials played too much of a role in the outcome, (I'm not saying they robbed Seattle, but they pushed the scales a little too much). Pretty disappointing end to the season. Of course, there's always the Pro-Bowl...

No way. The first moment where you can actually see the ball happens when the ball was at Rothlisberger's waist. There's no way that ball broke the plane.

I say no matter how much anyone complains, the Steelers are still Super Bowl XL champions.

I'm glad I watched The Fly, instead.

Boring as hell Superbowl with awful officiating. The Steelers won by being the less crappy team (just barely).

I should've took bets on what the Stones' setlist would be.

Something to chew on...

40 Superbowls...

Steelers 5 Wins
Forty-Niners 5 Wins
Cowboys 5 Wins
Patriots 3 Wins
Redskins 3 Wins
Packers 3 Wins
Raiders 3 Wins

Seven teams account for 27 of the 40 Lombardi trophies.

This isn't to mention the teams like the Dolphins, Giants, and Broncos that each own 2 trophies a piece.

So you've got 10 teams with multiple championships counting for 33 of the 40 Superbowls. Which leaves you with 7 teams accounting for single wins in the big game.

17/32 Have won the Championship in the last 40 years. This doesn't even account for the 1960's, when the big game was just called the NFL Championship, and was dominated by teams like the Packers and Browns.

Just some stuff to chew on...I would have to look at the other leagues but that is just some stuff to chew on there. Must suck to be a fan of those other 15 teams.

I don't think it was on purpose, but the NFL has a perception problem today based on the officiating. That almost resembled an NBA game at times in how one sided it fell.

That said, I agree that Pittsburgh scored a touchdown, although it was very close. The ball looked like it go all of 1 inch over the front of the line to me, but that's enough.

OTOH, I'd agree that the refs basically blew the rest of the calls against the Seahawks. That "blocking below the waist" call was purely BS.

Not to mention, if you're going to call ticky tac fouls, how about calling Pittsburgh for that "horse collar" tackle on Alexander right before Hasselbeck's interception?

Again, I don't think it was on purpose, but I just got the sense that the refs were caught up in the story of Bettis getting a ring in his hometown. And it's not like Seattle didn't have chances and failed to take advantage. And the refs had nothing to do with Seattle mismanaging the clock, dropping balls, or throwing interceptions. Pittsburgh made less mistakes than Seattle.

It's time for the NFL to hire full time umps. This amateur crap is just not cutting it.
Having said that, The Seahawks could have overcome the bad calls. They did not. And they really deserved to lose just for the incredibly bad time management.
But no doubt if either team had been playing this way four weeks ago, neither would have made it to the Super Bowl.
As for the commericals, I liked the Hummer Japanese Monster commercial, with the Fed Ex one a close second. I kind of liked the Burger King Musical one too. It looked like something that Max Bialystock would have produced. And that is exactly what they were aiming for. But not everybody's cup of tea.

And just what will having full-time refs fix exactly? What'll they do, sit around Tuesday through Friday reading the rule book over and over again?

What's needed are younger refs who have the athletecism to keep up with these plays so that you don't have a 60-year old twenty yards behind a play deciding the outcome of a game.

If the refs were full time they would referee a LOT more games, and experience would improve performance.
But I agree that they should be in good enough shape to keep up with the game.
And again, doing this for a living would mean you would spend time working out the gym to get ready for the game on Sunday.

I don't know what all the fuss about the goalline call was.



Ben was in.

How would they be officiating more games? There's still only at most 16 games a week. They'd still be doing nothing beneficial Tuesday through Saturday. Having them go off and do NFL Europe games would only benefit a handful (since that league plays fewer games with fewer teams). Sending them to do Arena games wouldn't benefit since it's a different rules set.

The best thing they can do right now is dump this whole "all-star" crew idea they use for the Super Bowl and keep officiating teams together the entire season and through the Super Bowl. That way you have a group that knows how to work together, knows their strengths and weaknesses. And keep the same crew together from season to season to develop continuity.

And considering how fast the game has gotten and how athletic the players are, the rule book needs to be revisited to simplify some things (the whole idea of receiver possession in and out of the end zone, for example, shouldn't require the wisdom of Solomon to figure out).

Making officials full-time will do nothing but make them better paid, which isn't going to affect their on-field aptitude one bit.

Officiating in the NFL is a big problem, but I don't think that focusing on the officials will fix it. The problem is that the NFL rule system is more complicated than anything devised by the Security & Exchange Commission to regulate derivative trading. Look at the stories this year about the complexity of the NFL rule book. If you were to actually get your hands on a complete, up to date copy, it would probably be the size of a couple of Manhattan phone books. And there are new rules every year. When I was listening to Madden and Michaels discussing all of the details and ramifications of the calls on Sunday, I kept waiting for them to cut to a team of lawyers who were experts in NFL rules. The only answer is to simplify this crap. Look at soccer. You could write all of the rules on the back of a cocktail napkin--you can't be offside and you can't kill anybody. But football just generates rule after rule--rules to deal with every conceivable situation. I say simplify the rules and let the officials interpret them instead of making them more complex and demanding that the officials extend exactly the right one to whatever is happening on the ground.

And people think the NFL has more parity than the other sports.

"Anyone can win a championship"...while I suppose that's true, there's a reason why so many of the same teams have won multiple times. It takes more than just lots of money to win a title, and the multiple winners obviously have everything it takes.

that data is skewed. back in the day if a team sucked, they sucked for a very long time. it's totally different today with free agency. atleast the teams have a chance to rebuild in a few years. the rams, ravens and pats pretty much came out of nowhere to win their super bowls. the bucs finally became a good team and won themselves a super bowl. maybe cincy can win one now or even the cards (haha) in a few years.

Yet in the era of Free Agency the Cowboys won 3 Superbowls, the Patriots won 3 (went to 4), Denver won 2. Greenbay went to 2. The Rams went to 2. So if you figure that free agency began in 1992...those numbers are still par for the course.

Pats didn't come out of nowhere. They had a good owner who was willing to build a team.

Edit: Cincy was terrible for the first 11 years of free agency despite having number 1-3 draft picks nearly every year. The Ravens were built around a top notch defense and were threats to go deep in the playoffs every year for four years. Not to mention that the Ravens used to the original Browns. A team which did well at times despite it's employment of Schottenheimer.

half the teams that made the playoffs this year probably won't even make it next season. in the past 8 seasons, not including this year, 10 out of the 16 super bowl teams failed to make the playoffs the next season. in the past 10 years 7 franchises have won the super bowl, while in the previous 10 only 4 teams did. over the years it seemed like the raiders, steelers, 49ers, skins, cowboys, dolphins and throw in the odd team or two would be the only teams that'd make the playoffs. from 1967 to 1985 the raiders won 13 division titles and made the playoffs 15 times. can you honestly see that ever happening again?

the cowboys already won a super bowl before free agency even began. their team was already set in place for atleast a couple more seasons before free agency would start dismantling the team. how did they become great? jimmy johnson knew how to draft.

the ravens never in their history made the playoffs until the year they won it. yes it was only a couple of seasons but the browns were pretty terrible for years as well. they had that one good season with belichick. as you stated they had 4 years were they could've went deep into the playoffs. wow 4 years! too bad they didn't do that besides the lone season they won it all. do you realize that back in the day teams would be going deep into the playoffs for years on end. you'd see the same teams in the playoffs practically every season.

the rams were terrible in the 90's and then out of nowhere they won their lone super bowl. the pats only won 5 games the year before they took the lombardi trophy. bledsoe looked like a total gimp and then all of a sudden he got injured and some guy who was third on the depth chart the year before and who was a part time starter in college led them to a super bowl. of course you're right, that wasn't coming out of nowhere. the bears were terrible in '04, then they won the division. most people said the chargers were the worst team in football heading into '04. they went on to win 12 games. the panthers were the worst team in football and 2 seasons later were playing in the super bowl. free agency makes it much easier to rebuild a team. teams no longer solely depend on the draft in turning things around. it may take a few attempts before they'll succeed but unlike the 70's and 80's, teams atleast have a fighting chance to bounce back quickly. before it'd take years just to build a somewhat solid foundation. i'm not saying that everytime someone decides to rebuild their team they're going to succeed in doing so, because in a lot of the cases it does turn out to be a complete failure, but atleast today it's a hell of a lot easier.


the bengals sucked for years on end because paul brown is arguably the worst owner in football, the team drafted awfully and nobody would go there in free agency because well...they were the bungals. the steelers were so good for so long because they drafted about 10 hall of famers in a 5 year span. they kept all those guys for many years because they could. so what happened? they were amazing for a decade and won 4 super bowls during that time. now, after 4 or 5 years the majority of the players bolt to different teams so it's harder to maintain greatness. the difference was, before free agency and the salary cap once you were good you'd usually be good for the long haul. today, your window to winning is a lot smaller because you're forced to constantly retool your roster. nowadays you're lucky to win back to back divison title's. to threepeat is almost a miracle. if a team remains great for 5 years your front office is doing a terrific job in pretty much every facet of running a team. what the patriots have been able to do the past 5 years has been simply amazing.

I tried to get through your message but punctuation and capitalization seemed to have left you on the side of the road. I'm no saint in these areas, but what a friggen jumble of words.

First off you are taking this a bit too personally. I'm just throwing out numbers for discussion and you are trying to be a wiseass. Use the shift key every once in a while and calm down.

Second you are right about Free Agency. It has changed the landscape. I'm not sure it has made it as easy to make the playoffs as everyone thinks. The Arizona Cardinals are terrible and will continue to be so due to poor ownership. There are other similar franchises. Sure some of the dogs will eventually have their day but you can't be terrible forever.

What you forgot about is the Salary Cap. It penalizes teams who spend too much on the latest and greatest cast off. The 49ers have nearly destroyed their franchise due to cap issues. It is the great equalizer that maintains a relative status quo.

On the Cowboys...Yea and they also won two after free agency began(with a year or two inbetween 2nd and 3rd titles). That team was made better by the draft. It should also be noted that Jimmy Jones' owner interference derailed them more than anything. Only now by allowing Parcells to have the say in decisions have they managed a smidge of success.

On the Ravens....they had the best damn defense in football for at least four years. They set the template for the Bucs to win their championship. There is nothing "out of nowhere" about them winning the Bowl except that Dilfer was their QB.

On the Rams...They built a powerhouse offense that ran circles around the league for three years. You seem to forget they went to two superbowls.

On the Patriots....Yeah they finished 5-11 the year before they won the Championship. But their longevity is proof that they actually managed to build something from those defeats. So yes I am right. Good drafting and smart free agent pick-ups mean that they did NOT come from nowhere. Once again, Bob Kraft is a good owner who let Belicheck handle football.

Bengals...the less said about their history the better. They did have a decent 80's however.

On the Steelers....despite not having a plethora of Hall of Famers or great free agent pick-ups, except for Jerome Bettis in 96, they have made it to 4 AFC title games during Cowher's time as coach. Every year the media gets into a lather about what players the Steelers lost in the offseason. They did have a rough spot there with two straight 6 win seasons. Their owner stayed out of the way and stuck with Cowher. It seems to have payed off.

So where does that leave us? If we really crunched the numbers I think we would find that things aren't as different as we think. They are different yes, but we are far from the NFL being a rotisserie league. Teams still have to draft well and form chemistry. Organizations still have to do the things they did in the 70s and 80s.

You seem caught up in the notion that because a team has a poor record one year and a good one the next they came from nowhere. This is a superficial view of the situation at best. The smart teams make changes in the off season and adjust to become better. The others are well...the 1990's Bengals.