Thoughts on StealerBowl XLIII

That is an incomplete pass. I'm pretty sure the refs called it a fumble figuring that if they were wrong at least it was a reviewable play. And then they didn't review it, and the Steelers snapped the ball and one of the most exciting quarters in Super Bowl history was quickly and confusedly ended with the Stealers on top. Goodell sent his henchmen up to the booth to strong-arm Al Michaels into making up something about the officials reviewing it in the booth to cover up the obvious fuck up.

Would the Cardinals have scored on a Hail Mary? No, probably not, but they'd have a better shot than pretty much any team in the league with Fitzgerald and the added field position from James Harrison taking off his helmet. Basically, the NFL decided that instead of giving millions of people an exciting ending to a potentially epic Super Bowl, they would just give the Steelers another ring and leave us all muttering and annoyed.

Good work NFL!

And how come the last 2 years the Super Bowl has sucked until the 4th quarter? Yes, they both wound up being exciting games, but for 2+ hours they were garbage. NFL coaches need to sack up and start playing no-huddle offenses earlier in games, because it's excruciating to watch the first 3 quarters. If I only wanted to watch a little bit of exciting play at the end of a game I would start giving a shit about the NBA.

And the commercials mostly sucked, especially the Polamalu-Mean Joe Greene take off. Good God that was a bad idea. Were Super Bowl commercials ever actually good, or is that some sort of amazing and all-pervasive urban legend that has seeped into everyone's subconscious.

And one more thing: can we stop with this nonsense about Ben Roethlisberger being good? How many times did I hear, "He's not a great quarterback, he's a great football player!"? Or "you can't look at his numbers. Look at the wins"? Oh, so he's a great football player who happens to suck at the position he plays? No, Ben Roethlisberger is a fucking horrible QB on whom I wasted a high fantasy pick and therefore hate. He sucks, he is just on a team with an awesome defense. This "football player" stuff is like when people call someone like Darin Erstad a "baseball player." Technically, yes, those are their professions. But they are bad at their jobs and just happened to win a title or two based on the abilities of their teammates. Fuck Ben Roethlisberger.