First, please nobody bring up the Seattle near touchdown catches and the Rothlisberger touchdown. Even if you think those are bad rules, they are easily understandable (two feet down inbounds and plane of the endzone, respectively) and the calls appeared likely to be correct as the rules exist. Also, can we stop talking about the Hasselback illegal block call. That call was obviously wrong but again the rule is easy to understand. It was just a bad call, one of hundereds every year. All the other calls in the game were debatable by reasonable people, although the bulk of them went against Seattle and may or may have not cost them the game.

The legitimate complaints coming out of the game are really because nobody seems to be able to figure out what conduct actually constitutes pass interference and holding. It all seems very arbitrary to even the most knowledgable football fans, and that is really the fuel behind the myth. Everyone's frustration is not that the pass interference call was bad or that the holding call was bad under the rules, though that's how it's articulated.

Nobody wants to admit that they don't have the slightest clue what constitutes holding and pass interference. I'll admit it; I don't have a clue. I've been watching this game since before the Giants played at the Yale Bowl and I have never been able to discern what exactly the officials are looking for on holding or pass interference. I, and almost everyone else I gather, use the old pornography "know it when I see it" standard, and to me those calls on Sunday don't meet that standard. I know the rulebook says one thing but that is simply not the way it has been called on the field in my lifetime. Every week I see pass intereference called on defenders who do nothing other than try to make plays on the ball and are actually interfered with by offensive players. Then I see offensive players get away with things that would be flagged in a New York minute if the defense did it. The rule as written may make sense, but as enforced it could not be more arbitrary and the calls on Sunday are just the culmination of my 30+ years of frustration in tryign to figure out what the hell constitutes pass interference and holding.

King is correct, many of these debatable calls may have been correct and are called from to time. But that's the problem. Why aren't they called all the time or not at all. The answer I guess is that Football is a tough game to officiate. There's simply too much going on for the officials to see it all and it happens too fast, and therefore, the same conduct gets flagged on one play but not the next, or more often, the next three times. This all makes it a frustrating game to watch as nobody likes watching a game knowing that there's a good chance what they're watching may not even count.

I guess there are no easy solutions. You can forget full-time officials. I have never been able to figure out and have never heard anyone actually explain why would make one bit of difference.

In the world of political thought (I assume you read the other parts of Salon) people talk about ideas like institutionalized racism and sexism. Simply put it means that people often have biases that aren't directly noticeable, perhaps even by themselves, but we can recognize it by activity over a period of time. Hey look, there's no minority coach hirings!

While you make the point that incorrect officiating is essentially just part of the game (and the we need to except that), you are totally ignoring when the officiating trends one way or another. While I do not think the refs were "on the take" I can easily see them having a hidden personal preference for one team or the other. Perhaps something subtle. Perhaps they too were charmed by all the Jerome Bettis returning to Detroit stories. Perhaps they didn't want to piss off a crowd that's 90% Steeler fans. And while I can not read their minds I count how many bad calls went one way and the other. In fact, we can all do that math.

You may continue to argue that bad calls are just chance and where they land is a matter of luck, but we all know that famous people get the breaks. If you're a star basketball player you'll get the call over the unknown journey man. None of this is new. It's just accepted as part of the fame, and that's wrong.

In the world of fencing there's an old story where a famous veteran beats a newcomer in the final bout, and with some questionable calls. The newcomer approaches the veteran and says, "You won because of your reputation." The veteran replies, "Get yourself a reputation."

Maybe he changed his mind there. Or maybe he was just pandering to the home crowd. Holmgren's a smart guy. He knows why his team really lost.

Or maybe he stated it exactly he right. He didn't say "we lost because of the officials" but he did imply that the officiating made it more difficult on his team and I agree with him to that extent. Almost all of the questionable officiating seemed to side with the Steelers. The only call (or non-call, actually) that I noticed that favored the Seahawks was on Kelly Herndon's interception return, someone on Seattle clearly blocked Roethlisberger in the back and it wasn't called.

And the beat goes on...on the eve of 1st UNC-Duke matchup of the season.

http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/main/index.cgi?7232

This is a link to an interesting article about alleged pro-Duke basketball bias in ACC and NCAA. This has especially gained traction in the ESPN universe - whose programming now more about creating controversy as it is about reporting on the game itself.

Oh please. What do you want the league to do, hand the Super Bowl trophy to the teams voted "best" at the end of the regular season instead of having playoffs? The Steelers beat the teams with the 3 best records in the AFC and the best team in the NFC. Should they need to play both Pro Bowl teams too to prove there's no better team in football? Or are you going to insist that the referees "stole" the other 3 games, too?