One of the worst Super Bowl's I've ever seen. Boring first half, partially caused by bogus penalties on Seattle, including pass interference call on touchdown and holding call on a big punt return. Calling that play pass interference means that the receiver isn't allowed to untangle himself from the defender. They were jostling and the receiver simply outjostled the defender. it happens all the time and is rarely called.

We'll never know if Rothliesberger really scored on that play but what makes it frustrating is that the official appeared to change his call when he saw Ben reach over after he was down. I see this all the time, are the officials that stupid that they don't know this happens.

The holding call on Seattle in the fourth quarter was ridiculous, as was the Hasselbeck penalty. As a fan with no rooting interest it makes for a terrible game to see the officials affect the outcome in such an overt way. having said all that, Pittsburgh played a better overall game, but the game had the excitement level of a MNF game in October

For all the non-lawyers out there just think of the movie "Demolition Man". as I recall, in the movie every store in the future is named "Taco Bell." therefore, the name was no longer associated with the store we now know. Threfore, the mark would no longer have been good.

It would be like if we started calling all soda "Coke". As in Orange Coke, grape coke, ginger coke, cream coke. I'm told they do this in parts of the South. The Coca-Cola co would then lose its trademark since the name Coke would no longer be associated with their company. The trademark lasts as long as it is associated with its source.

To respond to the letter in defense of the Aggies trademark, the main issue in the case is whether the phrase "12 man" has any source identification left. In other words, in a game of word association when you hear 12th man do you say Texas A&M or Aggies. I think most people don't, or if you're a big college football fan you would say that it originated with the Aggies but now it is used generically. Similar to how a knowledgable person might know that "elevator" was once a trademark of the Otis company. There are many cases involving so-caled "lost" trademarks, such as elevator, escalator, and thermos just to name a few. This is likely to fall into that category

I agree with King to a point that poor people are priced out of the sports market but I get the feeling that much of these complaints stem from the ever-prevalent sentimentalism for the days of the 70s when all the sports we watched was free, even though there wasn't all that much of it.

The big shift took place in the early 80s (at least in my part of the country, the NY area) and since then the situation has been pretty stable. If you look at the amount of sports that is available on free TV it seems as if it's pretty close to what it was about 20, though not 30, years ago. You still get your two or three NFL games on Sunday, your college football, college basketball, a little network hockey, a little network basketball and all the big golf tournaments. It's true that the pro bowlers tour and horse racing has been shifted to cable, but I'm sorry to say that who is going to win the Hambletonian hasn't been a concern of mine for many years. The era of 100+ games of free baseball was gone in the 70s and now most markets get somewhere between 20-40 free games a year of their hometeam, it seems to me. If this changes, that will be unfortunate but I think free baseball will always be available to some degree and a cheap seat is still about the price of a movie, which is about what it has always been, so I don't think there is any real cause for alarm.

In other words, at this point, what is happening is that more sports is being made availbale on cable, but not at the expense of free TV. This latest installment is a perfect example. Why should someone who doesn't have cable complain that the NFL is making some games available to those who can pay for it rather than not make them available to anybody (except for the dish people), as they do now. The growth of cable has been the single best thing to happen to sports in my lifetime (other than the 1986 Mets). I'm thrilled that I can now watch the home games of the Knicks and Rangers, which I never could as a kid, and can watch many more college football and basketball games than before. And the best part is that none of this comes at the expense of the people from my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, who for all I know probably still aren't wired for cable, since they can tune in and watch about the same things as they did in 1985.