And King, my friend, if we're going to continue talking about football--or at least what the rest of the world considers football--that means the next grand topic is the World Cup (people only care about who gets voted to the Pro Bowl; no one actually watches).

I would dispute this. Nobody cares who gets voted to the Pro Bowl.

King is right that the NFL has an officiating problem, but there can be no doubt that the poor oficiating probably cost them Sunday's game.

His argument that, had the Seahawks played better and not made as many mistakes they would have overcome the bad officiating, does not make sense. True, the Seahawks did play poorly. But in spite of this, they almost certainly would have had the lead in the fourth quarter, if not for the officials errors. Why? because they outplayed the Steelers.

The fact is the Steelers also played a terrible game. I know that the standard argument to this is that they still made the the crucial plays when they had to. My response is: so did the Seahawks. The Seahawks just had their timely plays overturned by the refs.

King's argument is illogical. He's basically saying that the Seahawks are to blame for not playing well enough to overcome the referrees mistakes.

What he fails to consider is that a team does not have to play a good game in order to win. They only have to play better than their opponent. They did. By King's argument, the Seahawks are expected to play better than the Steelers and to simultaneously overcome the referrees' calls that go against them. If they cannot, then they don't deserve to win.

If you step back and think about it, it's obvious that this is an unfair expectation to place on any team.

and i'm done with this.

You've been telling some tales as well. Porter did not complain about "trick plays", he said Indy was not a physical running team.

"They don't want to just sit there, line up and play football," Porter said. "They want to try to catch you off guard. They don't want to play smash-mouth football, they want to trick you. ... They want to catch you substituting. Know what I mean? They don't want to just call a play, get up there and run a play. They want to make you think. They want it to be a thinking game instead of a football game." --joey porter

you can say he was not referring to flea-flickers here, but to audibles and no-huddle plays, but the point is the same. he's complaining.

the whole point of my post was to say that there are always complaints--from fans, from players, and from coaches. but everyone wants seattle fans (not the team, mind you, who have held their tongues) to just shut up immediately. but the steelers (porter in particular) are free to bitch before and after a game they won. peyton manning blames it on his offensive line. the giants blame it on feely. chicago player blames it on snow. it goes on and on. but in the big game, when there are clearly officiating irregularities to say the least, we seattle fans should just sit quiet.

let us vent for two friggin' days, okay? i'm really done with it.

i just don't like being accused of lying when the subject is really an emotional one, that perspective can admittedly cloud. in every post i called myself a biased seattle fan, made no bones about it. i pointed out that plays like the offensive interference and hold can be legit calls, by the book. they just happend not to be on 2nd and 5 at the 40, but rather in pretty crucial moments where the course of the game was at stake. i took back my roethlisberger block statement after looking at the play closer, so you can drop that already. i've always said that jackson looked out at the pylon and even attempted to explain the call to other seattle supporters. i will stick by my frustration with the roethlisberger touchdown, though. no one has been able to explain the ref's change of heart/call on the way in from the sideline, and that changes who had to make the challenge (offense or defense), provide conclusive proof (review concluded there was none), and wager a valuable time out.

this conversation wouldn't be continued as a topic in the sports media for two days if it were only seattle fans who thought the officiating was a bit one-sided. bad calls went both ways, but more to the steelers' advantage. that's just facts. we didn't "make these up." it may be that they were all perfectly legit and seattle just made more penalties. we just don't think so, and here was a forum to discuss it.

I think your summary of the officiating in this game is about right.

When I still played soccer I always looked for consistency in the referee's calls. Heck, back then I didn't even know the rule book, really. But I did know that if I did it and it got called, by gosh it should get called when my opponent did it too. This is true in other sports, no doubt. Baseball umps don't call the rule book strike zone, they call their own. But players expect that that zone will be the same for both teams.

And that's the major beef I've had throughout the the season. The refereeing these days is spotty and timid, the latter due to instant replay. Players and fans don't get a sense of how the game is being called and get frustrated. Based on the examples I saw during the Super Bowl, for instance, I couldn't tell someone what a hold was. Heck, I don't even know what constitutes a completed pass anymore!

Finally, I don' know how the officiating crews are selected. It seems to me that these games should go to the crew that performed best that season. For instance, Mike Carey and his crew were consistently the best I've seen this year. I saw his crew do one playoff game, and they did a good job. Too bad they weren't in the Super Bowl.