I didn't think the officiating was any better or worse than any other relatively close game. Couple of holding calls that could have gone either way, a quaetionable pass-interference call, and a dicey goal-line call. Does any one here actually watch the regular season? This was par for the course.

We here in Indiana were reduced to celebrating Randle-El's TD throw as the first by an IU QB in the SuperBowl. Pretty hilarious that his career SB stats will be better than Peyton's.

Bottom line, this game was mediorce at best and held little interest for most fans.

btw, I have no idea what they were adverstising, but the one with the Benny Hill parody gets my vote. Only thing missing was a flasher...

Absolutely MAtt - WTF with those Steelers caressing and genuflecting with the trophy most of the 2nd half. I totally agree that you need to WIN the trophy to touch it. Why not have the team winning at half-time come out for a ring fitting with Michele Tafoya next time?

the point was that the calls were almost all against seattle. sometimes even when there was no call to make. all season long, reffing has been sloppy. calls have changed games. seattle's been on both ends, but in any national game we seem to be fighting against the refs more than the other team. i'm still pissed that though we won the giants game earlier in the year, it had to go to a crazy overtime after a questionalble touchdown call was upheld (shockey getting decked and dropping the ball before his feet came down).

so what makes for better refs?

full-time, salaried referees?

[and seattle did not get a full half of trophy groping like pitt. hasselbeck, alexander, and holmgren got mixed in with some stealers at halftime, but not a full half afterwards like the stealers did in the first half. anyway...]

Six minutes into the 4th quarter the score really should've been 21-21, or pretty close to. I'm not saying the game was fixed, but even I have to wonder about the NFL's crediblity.

The "push-off" was a ticky-tacky call that 99 percent of the time is never called. Anyone remember Michael Irvin's routine man-handling of CBs and DBs? And that hold near the goal line was no hold by Seattle; unless you call everything most Linemen do nowadays "holding".

I don't think the referrees are out fixing games. Personally I think the challenge system and instant replay have made the Ref's lazy. But how many close games have swung on the sloppy officiating this year? More than I can remember.

The NFL is developing quite a crediblity gap between the officials and the fans.

As far as the NFL season went, you didn't miss a thing this year....

The officiating wasn't nearly as bad as in the divisional round. They didn't badly miss any calls involving scoring or even change of possession. They screwed up the call on Hasselbeck's tackle, but that was after the interception in any case. They called incomplete when it should have been a fumble once, but the next play was a punt anyway. And you can't really complain too much about the holding call, they almost never get that right.

I was very surprised by Holmgren. He turned the perennially mediocre Seahawks into a Super Bowl team, and then froze up in the big game. That's not something you expect from someone who is coaching in his fifth Super Bowl, and third as the head coach. The terrible time management has already been mentioned, but the worse decision was to kick an extra point instead of going for two when it was 14-9. One point does absolutely nothing for you in that situation, but two would put you in position to tie the game with only a field goal.

In the end this game was won by Pittsburgh's defense. Seattle's only touchdown came on a 20 yard drive. Otherwise, they mostly kept Seattle from driving deep into Steelers territory, and when they did catch a break with that holding call they took full advantage of it with a sack on the next play. They're not getting the credit they deserve because Seattle was able to move the ball across midfield several times. However, if you watch closely you can see that the plan was to allow Seattle to have those 5-7 yard plays (in order to prevent the big play) until they approached field goal range, and then to tighten up, and the Steelers defense executed this plan throughout the game.

It may have been Pittsburgh's worst offensive performance of the playoffs, but the Steelers were clearly the NFL's dominant team over the past two months. They didn't back into this title, they beat the top seeds in both conferences on the road, in addition to crushing the Broncos in Denver. Most of their players at the skill positions are young and under contract. Losing Bettis will obviously have a major impact, but they're capable of winning as a passing team now. This franchise is better positioned than any other to have a sustained run of championships.

What a cheap win for Pittsburgh. Palmer's knee was the start of an incredible run of luck. That wasn't retro, that was just crappy football.

I hate that we're forced to talk about the officiating. But it was horrendous and one sided, so we have to. Everyone's mentioned the offensive pass interference call (I thought it was pretty funny that Irvin was called upon to comment), the Roethlisberger "touchdown" and the whole offsides not called-phantom holding business. But what about Jackson (again!) appearing to score a touchdown but being called out of bounds? Under two mintues to go in the first half, so Seattle can't challenge, but he hit the pylon. Why wasn't this reviewed? Because we needed another shot of Bettis' second cousin eating nachos?

King, how about a column on East Coast Bias? Because we've had an ugly dose of it the past two weeks. Seattle is an interesting city. Their players have families and histories. But none of that was worth bothering about, The Seahawks were just a little impediment to the real story. It sells the fans short, it sells the game short.