SuperBowl XLIII

Another football season has concluded, and for the second year in a row, it did so with a great game. It's fun to think back to last year when I watched the game on a bright sunny Monday morning (thanks to the 13 hour time difference) over eggs and bacon. This year, the game was back to it's normal Sunday night slot, and with plenty to talk about (game related, and otherwise), it's time to hand out some awards:

Favorite John Madden Quote: From the moment I heard that John Madden was broadcasting the game, I couldn't wait to see what kind of dumb or obvious things would come out of his mouth. It didn't take him long. "Steve Breaston is the Cardinal's third receiver, so when he's on the field, you know the Cardinals are going with three receivers."

Most undervalued play of the game: On a 3rd and 10, Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger drops back, scrambles left, turns back to the right, scrambles through traffic, keeps his feet as his legs get hit, spins back to the right and finds Heath Miller for the first down. The play prevented a punt and the possession ended up in the end zone.

Lame play of the game: I can remember the Cardinals facing at least two 3rd and very long plays in which they tried little underneath passes that, barring a miracle, had no shot at gaining more than five yards. Both plays were in the middle of the field, so five yards wasn't going to help with field position, so would it have been unreasonable to toss one up to Larry Fitzgerald who has spent the entire postseason flat out outjumping double coverage? Yes, I know. I'm just a fan watching on TV. I don't know what the coverage on Larry looked like. But I can't imagine why they wouldn't have called a play that set up a jump ball that allows Larry to jump higher than everyone else, like he always does. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Or you can throw it to Edgerine James, hope he pulls a houdini to get out of heavy pursuit from Troy Palamalu and then manages to make three more defenders miss.

Great play of the game: With under three minutes, Larry Fitzgerald takes a short route across the middle and turns up field untouched for a 64 yard touchdown, giving the Cardinals a three point lead and leaving every Arizona fan with two thoughts:
1)YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHH
2)Oh no oh no, the Steelers still have 2:50, oh no oh no oh no oh no no no no no no...

2nd favorite Madden quote: After James Harrison intercepts a Kurt Warner pass at the goal line and runs 100 yards for the score, the play is being reviewed to see whether his knee was down before he crossed the goal line. Madden says, "When a guy makes a play like that, and runs like that, they should give him the touchdown." If there was ever a sport where style points mean nothing it's football. Even coach Tomlin knew this (in his post game speach he mentioned something about Steelers football not being pretty, you can throw away style points) and he is the youngest coach to coach in a Super Bowl. Yet an age old coach from the old days that you hear all the old players saying was so much tougher, yada yada yada, would judge a huge, close call by effort. I feel the last few drops of my respect dripping from John Madden's barrel.

Worst broadcast design: Through out the game, you can check the score and current situations on NBC's bar at the bottom of the screen. There is one section, that at the beginning of the play would show the down and distance, and after the play would spin around to say "SuperBowl 43." This is also the place where the yellow "flag" inticator would pop up when there was a penalty on the play.

Some genius from NBC decided that the side of the bar, as it spun from down and distance to "Super Bowl 43" should say "NBC-something unintelligible." The point? I still don't know. It spun so fast all I could catch was "NBC." The part where common sense clearly failed the designer however, was that they decided to make the "NBC-something" the color YELLOW. At what point they thought it would be a good idea to flash something yellow in the spot where a viewer is looking for a penalty flag indicator is beyond me. I don't know how many times a play was run and I thought "Oh, nice play, shoot, there's a penalty, oops never mind." This probably goes down as one of the single most confusing gadgets to a NFL broadcast I've ever seen (second to missed placed and crooked first down lines).

Redundancy second only to Madden: It's not just the Super Bowl refs, but I just noticed it last night. When a touchdown catch is being reviewed. One hundred percent of the time (since the push out rule has gone the way of the dinosaur), the two aspects being looked at are 1)did he get two feet down, and 2) did he have possession. So why is it, that when a play that was ruled a touchdown, gets reviewed and is upheld as a touchdown, does the referee say anything more than, "After review, touchdown!" If the ruling is a touchdown, we know that 1) he had two feet down, and 2) he had possession. So why mumble through all the "After review, the receiver maintained possession, and got two feet down inbounds, touchdown!" They might as well say, "After review, the receiver had a white jersey...the jersey was white, touchdown!" (As for the argument that not everyone watching the Super Bowl knows as much about football as I do, the ref's job isn't to cater to the half interested people across the nation. That's what other people at parties are for. If there's no one at the party that understands the two feet down with possession rule, they probably don't care anyway.)

Best random stat: The NFC team in the Superbowl has won the coin toss 12 straight years. The irony of it is, that, before this year, winning the coin toss was basically losing it, because most teams would prefer to get the ball first in the second half, but before the ability to differ was placed into the rulebook this year, they were forced to take the ball first.

Do you really think he wants to talk to you? moment: After the huge play at the end of the first half where the Cardinals went from looking like they were about to at least tie the game, to being down 10 points at half time, one of the on the field reports decided to talk to Cardinals head coach Ken Wisenhunt as he left the field. Do you really think he's thinking about anything other than what he's going to tell the team in the locker room?

Best postgame comment: When Santonio Holmes was asked what he thought when Fitzgerald ran past the defense to give the Cardinals the lead, he said something to the tune of, "You know I got pretty discouraged, but I really had faith in our defense to get us the ball back." I wish I could do a national survey of both football fans and non fans, but I betcha a pretty high percentage of people, no matter how little they know about football, understand the concept of, "When one team scores, the other team gets the ball." Santonio, it's great you have faith in your defense, but you were about to get the ball anyway.

3rd worst politics to sports crossover in history: Of all the people Steelers owner Dan Rooney could have thanked for their support, why president Barack Obama was the first, I still can't wrap my mind around. As for the other worst politics to sports crossovers:
2nd place: Ed Rendell suggesting (a couple years ago) that if the Eagles met the Steelers in the big game, it should be moved to Beaver Stadium (Penn State) and only PA license plates were allowed. There's one guy who doesn't understand economics.
1st place: During John Kerry's campain, he spoke to a crowd in Ohio and proclaimed "I have been a Buckeye's fan all of my life" leading to cheers. A couple days later, he was speaking to a crowd in Michigan (big college football rivals), but he forgot he had switched states and proclaimed "I have been a Buckeyes fan all of my life!" leading to boos.

Worst call of the game: Ben Roethlisberger dropped back IN THE POCKET, pressure came and he started dancing around IN THE POCKET, before finally throwing the ball FROM IN THE POCKET out of bounds. Clearly, intentional grounding. Fortunately, the men in stripes threw a flag...for roughing the passer, which in my mind, there was no extra effort made towards the QB after he threw the ball. The push down might have been a bit excessive, but QB's don't get hurt from getting pushed down, they get hurt from getting slammed down. There was really no need at all for a flag. Well there was, just for a different one.

Most irrelevant Personal Foul ever: During a Cardinals punt late in the game in which they were able to pin the Steelers at their own one yard line. Steeler James Harrison got flagged for a, to be quite honest, boneheaded unnecessary roughness penalty. Under normal circumstances, it would have been 15 yards from the end of the play. However, the ball was on the one yard line, so they resorted to "half the distance to the goal." So it resulted in a 2 foot personal foul. What I don't understand, is, because the ball was already punted, the Steelers maintained possession. However, earlier in the game, when a Cardinal ran into the holder for a field goal, after the ball was kicked, the result was "1st down Steelers."

Now, I never like to see possessions extended by a penalty when the team is kicking (either punt or fieldgoal), so in most cases, I'm perfectly happy to see 15 yards taken off the end of the play. But for special circumstances, there has to be more of a penalization for a personal foul than 2 feet. For false starts, or off sides, I'm fine with "half the distance" whatever it may be. Those penalties are simply mistakes. But personal fouls are just that. Fouls. Perhaps they could tack on a five play suspention for the player or something like that.

There were plenty of other calls that I could discuss, such as another non intentional grounding call during the same drive (perhaps the right call by the rule book, I don't know, but just because he left the pocket before coming back into the pocket doesn't mean he wasn't in the pocket), and the holding call that resulted in a safety. Again probably the right call by the books, but I didn't see it as having any effect on the play.

Okay. This was quite long. Thanks to the Steelers and Cardinals for a great game. Thanks to the Eagles for another season of...er...consistency.