A ref watching what in that moment he believes to be a penalty and not throwing a flag isn't "letting the players decide the thing" he's ignoring what he saw as a penalty. That's not their job. You call what you see. Even in the Super Bowl, and perhaps especially in a 0-0 1st quarter. Otherwise he should walk off the field and tell the other guys refs aren't needed, the players can decide things.

Besides which, I think the players did decide the game:

1-10-PIT16 (2:08) M.Hasselbeck pass to D.Jackson for 16 yards, TOUCHDOWN NULLIFIED by Penalty. PENALTY on SEA-D.Jackson, Offensive Pass Interference, 10 yards, enforced at PIT 16 - No Play.

1-20-PIT26 (2:00) S.Alexander right end to PIT 25 for 1 yard (C.Haggans).

2-19-PIT25 (1:18) S.Alexander left end to PIT 29 for -4 yards (L.Foote).

3-23-PIT29 (:35) M.Hasselbeck pass incomplete to D.Hackett (B.McFadden).

4-23-PIT29 (:27) J.Brown 47 yard field goal is GOOD

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2-10-SEA22 (4:47) B.Roethlisberger pass to J.Bettis to SEA 17 for 5 yards (A.Dyson). PENALTY on PIT-H.Miller, Offensive Pass Interference, 10 yards, enforced at SEA 22 - No Play.

2-20-SEA32 (4:21) B.Roethlisberger sacked at SEA 40 for -8 yards (G.Wistrom).

3-28-SEA40 (3:58) (Shotgun) B.Roethlisberger pass to H.Ward to SEA 3 for 37 yards (M.Boulware).

Penalties suck, but they aren't turnovers. A 1st and 20 (or 2nd and 20) isn't a death sentence, it's a opportunity for players to make plays. One team made plays.

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As an aside. I'd never seen a losing coach not meet the winning coach for the post game handshake at midfield before XL. Not exactly a classy moment for the Seattle franchise.

Hey, let’s see if we can hit 100 whiny comments from Seattle fans about how they wuz robbed by the refs. The Seahawks loss obviously had nothing to do with the fact their entire team’s performance seemed to be phoned in (with the exception of the always-professional Joe Jurevicius [sp?], my vote for MVP had Seattle won), with the league MVP not managing a single memorable play (gaining 90 yards, four or five at a time, is a pretty good day, if you’re Ron Dayne), with a punter who never even tried to keep the ball out of the end zone, with an offense that couldn’t punch their way past an obviously gimpy Troy Polamalu, and with a head coach whose brain froze over with each two-minute warning!

My beef is not with the Seahawks, a very good team that I was actually rooting for all through the NFC playoffs. Had the Super Bowl gone the other way, I’m sure we would have heard just as much yowling about the injustice of it all from the Steeler fans. What bores the piss out of me is all this righteous hand-wringing about rules and penalties and how if you slow the video down to 1/24 speed you see that the receiver’s foot is exactly 1/8 inch out of bounds, and the coach should appeal.

C’mon, that was not what instant replay was intended for, not that it was a good idea to begin with. Because the outcome of one out of every 100 games is effected by an egregiously bad call, we now get half a dozen plays a game put under a microscope, just so the networks can sell more beer and Hummers. Pro football has become a game only a lawyer can love. What you see with your naked eye don’t mean a thing anymore, until validated by super slo-mo.

Just about any call can be deconstructed, if that’s what you care about. Take for instance Hasselbeck’s non-fumble, which everybody seems to agree was properly reversed. But Hasselbeck was touched before he hit the ground, not after, and there is no evidence that the contact caused him to go down. If he had broken a tackle at the fifty, run downfield and tripped over his own feet at the twenty, would he still be “down by contact?” As it was, I believe the correct call was made, but only because the officials used common sense, not because the rule as written was perfectly unambiguous.

On a completely different topic, if Seattle had won, the big story would have been Roethlisberger finally showing his youth. As cool as he’s been through the playoffs, he’s still a second-year QB with barely a full season’s starts under his belt. What you saw 80% of the time yesterday was major butterflies, a nearly Jake-Plummer-like performance—except, of course, when it really mattered, on the touchdown run, when everybody in the stadium knew a bootleg was coming, and when he tightrope-walked across the line of scrimmage before throwing to Ward. Imagine what he’ll be like when he matures!

it's been a common theme in king's column to discuss the stupefying intricasies on major sports rules. especially those of the NFL. i've said it in earliler threads--i know i'm biased to seattle. so when something can 'go either way' i want it to go seattle's.

so, the officiating has been beaten to death and everyone's got good points both ways, but i'm not convinced that the officiating was equally bad against both teams yet. there were maybe non-calls that could have been to the steelers' advantage (i still haven't seen a block to the back on ben during the INT return, but that could be seattle-blindness; and the stevens fumble/non-catch rolled out of bounds--could the steelers have somehow recovered it? maybe. and that would have been better for the hawks than our crappy punt; and i was wrong on the QB block on the gadget play--i thought it was a clip, but on a repeat viewing he's sort of facing the defender and hits from the side).

it's that the things steelers fans or even neutral observers call 'textbook' that beg for consistency:

granted, jackson touched hope with a straight arm. hope also held jackson's hands as he saw he was going to cut free. textbook defensive interference? could be. could also be brushed off as 'touchy-feely.' could have been no call. but it went the steelers way.

textbook holding? could be. there's the old saw that if that was enforced 'by-the-book, there could very well be holding on every play. it just so happens it's called on a play that had seattle in scoring position again. jim sees it differently. i saw locklear in front of the defender with his his hands at chest level. his left arm slips outside (allowed if offensive player makes effort to pull them back inside). by the time locklear has a chance to pull the single arm back (even if he never intended to) the defender is by him. in slo-mo, it looks like a long hold. in real time it's pretty quick and doesn't appear on its own(again, seattle blindness?) to keep the defender from stopping the QB before the throw.

all-in-all, i don't mean to question every play with rule book minutae. i don't have the unwritten rule book. the one's om the NFL site are woefully incomplete. i believe king even mentioned that a complete, up-to-date rulebook is not available to the public. wow.

my point earlier is that bad officiating kills momentum and can change the course of the game. we can argue cause and effect all the way back to the coin toss, but a lot of the calls stole momentum from a seattle offense that had the pitt D on its heels, and gave it to the steelers offense by giving them opportunities they never would have had.

who knows, if that first jackson endzone catch was called a touchdown, we'll never know if pitt could have rallied from behind to surprise seattle. if ben's TD was overturned, would they have gone for it on fourth down of kicked for a tie? i would have like to see the players and coaches play the game without grievous interference from the refs?