Well, last week I had to take on those who would slag the home of my birth, Pittsburgh.
Now must I turn my wrath to those who would slag the game won by Pittsburgh, Super Bowl XL.
The national nay sayers who spent the previous week stirring controversy by talking about Pittsburgh being “butt ugly” now flexed their adjective muscles in similar terms over the game.
They dissed the field as too small, the half-time show as boring, the pace as pedestrian and the refs as amateurish.
Almost all of them say that calls that went against Seattle cost the NFC champs at least 14 points, and it’s not lost on us Western PA’ers that the margin of victory was only 11.
“The worst ever,” one radio guru put it.
Coach Mike Holmgren went a step further in addressing 15-thousand fans in Quest Field on Monday.
“We knew it was going to be tough going against the Pittsburgh Steelers,” he told the brooding crowd, “I didn’t know we were going to have to play the guys in the striped shirts as well.”
Later in his comments he admitted that he hasn’t reviewed the disputed plays yet.
That figures.
In a poll in the Seattle Times, more than 83 percent of 4-thousand voters said that the refereeing in the Super Bowl was “terrible.”
I said it last week and I’ll say it again now.
Oh, enough!
Wide receivers are taught to short arm defenders when pushing off, to never fully extend an arm because it looks worse than it might be and it invites penalty.
Darrell Jackson extends his arm to briefly push off a defender in the end zone, but it’s the fault of the back judge that a TD is called back.
A Pittsburgh rushing TD by Ben Roethlisberger that is either made or missed by less an inch is somehow absolute proof that the fix is in because it’s ruled six points and not overturned on review.
And say what? There was a phantom hold in the NFL and real holds were not called? Wow, never heard that one before. Stop the presses, there’s conspiracy afoot.
Holmgren even went so far as to complain about vendors selling yellow towels in every section but green towels only in certain places.
Oh, meow, Mike.
The bottom line is that when a championship is at stake, you adapt, you improvise and you overcome.
That’s regardless of yellow flags or yellow towels.
Both teams had their chances and one team took better advantage.
Period.
The sad fact is that a poorly refereed game hurts both teams. It leaves one set of fans feeling cheated and the other feeling that the win is somehow tainted, somehow less than those who went before.
So come with me, folks, it’s time to move on.
Heck, training camp is only six months away.