This game was always going to be about whether Pittsburgh got ahead or fell behind, because their superb time-killing offense will grind out the game once they get ahead. Conversely, they lack the firepower to come from behind against a solid defense.

Pittsburgh used the element of surprise to pass their way into big leads in 3 earlier playoff games. The element of surprise was gone for the Super Bowl, with predictable results. And without good field position, they moved as well as the traffic here in Seattle on I-5 during rush hour. With Seattle's offense marching along nicely, the Steelers were on the ropes from the get-go.

Had Jerramy Stevens caught the two passes he dropped early on, Seattle would've been ahead early by anywhere from 10 to 14 points. Given Rothlisberger's off day, there would've been no way back for Pittsburgh.

And take away just one of the dropped passes, one of the missed field goals, or the bad clock management at the end of the 1st half, or even one of the early bad punts that would've stuck the Steelers ineffective offense deep in their own end, and the Seahawks would've had a chance to--at worst--tie the game on the last drive.

It took real effort on the part of the Seahawks to lose this one, but they somehow managed to pull it off.

"Paul Allen is in no way deserving of your disrespect here. He's poured quite a bit of money into the Seahawks and lowered ticket prices and I believe other prices so going to a game is more affordable to the fans."

He should RAISE the prices, you idiot. You know why? Because the fans SHOULD pay for their entertainment. Why should everyone else have to? If I go see a movie, I don't get a half price ticket thanks to a citywide sales tax the subsidizes my ticket.

No stadium should be publicly funded, at least as long is it's for a private, for-profit enterprise. Major League Losers did a nice job of demolishing the "brings revenue to our city" myth.

Who cares if the team leaves? By that logic, public funds should support symphonies, acting troupes, circuses, extended families, car dealerships, Wal-Marts... anything that threatens to leave.

Hey, they go, they go. If there's not the fan base to support them, it's not up to everybody else.

Football is basically a dumb sport. Unlike basketball, hockey, soccer, frisbee nobody really plays it on an amateur level. You can't. If football dies, it dies. Why should the public build new stadiums but not new hospitals?

New stadiums are about more profit for the owners. It's a profit deal - they do it for the luxury box configuration, etc. Why should the public help Paul Allen make more money? If he's team can't support itself, well... so?

Clowns. OK. I shouldn't have even glanced back here. This guy is a tremendous, insufferable clown, and that's so obvious no one reads him more than once who isn't one also. I sure never will again.

What a joke. FOX is more accurate and honest than Salon. What a disgrace.

Anybody who describes the pass interference call as minor or ticky-tack obviously doesn't know much about momentum. Jackson pushed Hope to the right at exactly the moment when he needed to break left in order to make a play on the pass. As anybody who's ever played sports can say, if you get pushed one way at the exact moment you need to go the other way you have two options. You either don't break in the right direction or you blow out every ligament in your knee. While Jackson didn't push Hope far away it was exactly the wrong push at exactly the wrong time and as a result Jackson had an easy, unobstructed catch. He may as well have hit him with a folding chair.

Jim,

Yep, he had the jersey, tucked inside the pads, while he pulled Alexander down by the neck hole on the shoulder pads.

Spoken like a true Fox watcher.

Don't know what you're talking about? Throw those insults.

There are studies that show cities benefit economically when they have a professional sports stadium. Why shouldn't people pay taxes to gain that benefit? How is that any worse than the bonuses cities pay to lure other businesses there?

Public funds DO support symphonies, acting troupes, car dealerships and especially Wal Mart.

No-one plays football on an amature level? What about the high school teams, pop warner teams, flag football teams, people playing in the park or the semi-pro teams that are scattered all over the country? When I worked for Bank One out in Ohio, one of the tech support guys I worked with was the owner/fullback of the Ohio Swarm. Minor League Football. Hell, there's even a woman's league now and I'm not talking about that stupid Lingere League.

You sure never will again? You say that every time and then come back. Such a tease.

Another example of why King Kaufman is the best sports writer in the country, for my money. Much better than the blowhards on sports radio and television. Mayhap real thinking does better in the relative shade of Salon?

Anyways, the only point I'd add is that an atrocious pass-interference call against New England, crucially right before half-time, was the most important moment in that game versus Denver. I don't think they ever recovered from the shock.

So, I'd definitely agree with King that the NFL does have an officiating problem. In particular, I agreed with King a few columns back when he said it might just be better to go with the officials' first instincts in most or all cases (and perhaps some men in white coats in a booth somewhere could overrule them in an extreme case). One moment in the game where I felt such a rule might have been better was at the end of that Hasselbeck when he appeared to fumble. To me, it seemed rather silly when it was decided that, in fact, he did not fumble, due to some arcane combination of factors (his left elbow touching the ground after someone nudged him in the arm?). To me, it seemed that he fell and couldn't hold onto the ball, which, is a pretty commonsense definition of a fumble. Certainly, the play was called correctly based on the rules, but why do the rules say that a fumble-looking-thing isn't a fumble?

In any case, I wonder if there's really no getting around the whole officiating problem, since football is fairly unique among American sports in that playoffs and championships are decided in single games. Given the single-game format, so much more is riding on each and every call, and there's really no chance for things to even out over a few games. Certainly, I'm not suggesting any change in this regard, football just isn't suited to long series--all the players would just drop dead after a few games in a row. But, as far as the overall ridiculousness of the rules goes, I think you could probably improve that by, as King says, letting the officals just go by the appearance of the play and not delving too deeply into the itsy-bitsy details. Perhaps if the NFL wanted to distract people from this problem, they might attempt to decrease the time each team receives between plays, so as not to give the television people so much time to show instant replays of what really happened.