The contraversy about the officiating was one of the few things to liven the game up. My take? I could see the call on Big Ben's TD. It looked like the tip of the ball got to the line before his shoulder was driven back. It certainly wasn't definitive in the negative. The pass interference call was a no-brainer. That was a textbook definition of pushing off to gain separation. All the pushing came from one man and the back judge almost swallowed his whistle trying to get the flag out. He never hesitated in his mental processing of the play.

The holding calls were the penalty one takes when one is blocking with his hands outside the frame of his body. As a football coach, I always tell my O-line that they can often get away with murder if their hands are in tight, but once they get wide, especially when the arm locks under the shoulder of the defender...look out.

The call on Hasselback was dumb, and I think Haggens was offside, at least within the context of how offside is called in the US.

The same guy who was a short time ago debating the exact sequence of thoughts that were going through a refs head during a 2 second span of the game (...it looked like he was going to spot the ball short, then he raised his arms, what was going on in his mind between those two moments seperated by some portion of a second...) is now calling me a parser(!) because I dare to suggest judgement calls were made all over the field during the Super Bowl, as though (gasp!) every call made by an official in every sport is a judgement call.

There are page after page here talking about the details of 3 or 4 calls that went against Seattle. Did Ben score, or should the ball have been spotted 2 inches further to the right. Was that a push, or just sort of a push. Was that hold enough of a hold to be called a hold. What is that besides parsing the plays???

I understand people feeling sad after a loss. I understand questions about various calls. What I don't accept is calling a win cheap, or suspect, or fixed because of a selective memory of all the calls made during a game, and a selective memory of the rules themselves.

If you want to discuss a given play, then let's talk about that play.

If you want to say the game was stolen because of the sum of the calls in the game then you have to be willing to discuss ALL of the calls. Not just the handful you didn't like.

If you want someone to say it's ok to feel bad when your team loses, consider it said. Was that ever debated by anyone???

Otherwise respect the right of Steeler fans to enjoy a win, just as we must respect your right to feel bad about a loss. Fair and square.

I hope everybody keeps bitching about the officiating in the Super Bowl. It'll give Bill Cower and Joey Porter lots of bulletin board material.

And I hope people stay away from NFL games next year because the game's integrity has been violated. It'll just mean more Steeler fans at away games.

...or it's you that can't just let it go. man oh man.

now i'm even starting to agree with kneel that this is getting to be clowning.

mr. roth, my comments about porter and many other players and fans were to illustrate that people complain about why they lost. the refs. the weather. their teammates. it's natural. unless of course you're from seattle. then you should just let it go, apparently. and i have. i haven't been complaining about the refs since the intitial shock and immediate conversations that followed. since then i've just been attempting to point out some hypocrisy against seattle fans. jim likes to say folks are not telling the truth. i was just pointing out that porter's quote, whether in full context or not, has him talking about "tricks." i didn't make that up. and that somehow the colts were less of a team because they wouldn't run right at joey, but rather would try to get around him. that somehow, using your head and sizing up a defense and making a play call on the field rather than through a headset from the sideline was wimpy and not old-school. of course, jim will surely parse that last statement and that i again took joey out of context. not that it matters, because once again the point about who's a complainer is lost. holmgren complained, yes. after the season was over, to a 100% seattle crowd. he shouldn't have pandered like that and should have followed his own players' lead, but he got swept up. if he's fined, i'll donate to the fee. but players from many teams, all season long, including joey porter of the steelers, complained right to the media during the season. just saying.

as for the truth about the calls in the game, the whole conversation is that there is no truth to NFL rules--most of the rules are they're completely subjective, it seems. so how is one fan's opinion more truthful than anothers?

but pittsburgh fans like jim want to keep it going. i've been trying to convey, unsuccessfully, that it's more than seattle fans that found the officiating lopsided. it's not in the national sports media as a big story because a few seattle fans felt a bit cheated. there's a myth fo you. many media folks and non-partisan fan have been pointing out the same thing.

now that doesn't mean there were no bad calls against the steelers, either. i thought i'd been very accomodating to the steelers fans about that. jim points out other controversial calls that were made against the steelers. i've said a while ago that i've deleted the game. i can't play it back to offer any explanations that would satisfy parser jim. i will grant that there could have been and even were bad calls.

many seattle fans here mentioned other calls that went against seattle, too. roethlisberger's delay of game, the possible offsides on the holding call and again on the following sack. the porter 'horse collar' of alexander. the holding that took back the warrick return in the second quarter.

parser jim will find evidence to support his case on each of these, surely. if i had the tape, i might be able to make a case against some of jim's examples. even without watching the tape, i still believe more bad calls went against seattle, and at more crucial moments in the game. rather than address that, i get back that there were bad calls against the steelers, too. i agree with jim (yes, it's true!) that the steelers did a better job with certain opportunities and setbacks, and that very well could be the difference in the outcome. the effect of each call changed the momentum of the game for each team.

but the point, one last time, is that if we can both find this many examples, without even watching every single little play for a hold or whathaveyou, then there was enough bad officiating and that makes both seattle fans and other observers wonder what would have been.