The Steelers 12th Man

First and foremost, hats off to the Steelers. As a Giants fan I am a bit jealous of Big Ben's recent performances and Jerome Bettis is just an awesome player and a person. Actually, the Steelers are my second favorite team behind the NY football Giants. As a Giants fan, I've seen terrible refs pretty much every Sunday, but I always figured I just wasn't objective enough. Though I like the Steelers, I think I can be fairly objective about this.

If you were watching the game, you noticed more than one strange occurrence. And no, I'm not talking aboutthe use of a foreign rock band for our nation's most important sporting event of the year. I'm talking about the strange calls made by the referees. Every game is going to have some questionable calls. And only a few minutes into this game we were already seeing that. I don't think anyone expected the calls to continue in the way they did though.

Constantly the Steelers were allowed to break rules without penalty. Bad tackles, penalties, even a touchdown that never happened. You know what I'm talking about. Ben Roethlisberger knows what we're talking about. Diving for the TD he was stuffed, the ball never crossed the goal line, yet he managed to muster it up from under his gut and push it in long after being down. Roethlisberger knew his crime though, you could see it in his eyes. Watch any replay of that moment and you'll see the unmistakable 'deer in the headlights' look that is on Ben's face. Not a good start to the game. So of course everyone watching assumes an appeal will be made and the call reversed. Both Seahawk and Steeler fans alike know that this call was wrong. Both sit with sweaty palms waiting for the answer. The referee in question by the way, has the lowest record in the NFL for overturning his own calls. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 23% of complaints by coaches are actually overturned. What does this mean? Does it mean that he's a great ref who doesn't make mistakes.... Or does it mean that he simply won't admit when he is wrong? In this case it was the 2nd answer.

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In recent years it seems that there are some of the same NFL football teams in the playoffs. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots of course. But some other teams have made it far in the last few years. The Indianapolis Colts, NFL tickets and the Seattle Seahawks as well. We've got great sports tickets and football tickets to all NFL and college football games, playoffs and Super Bowl 42 tickets too. You may also want to read our music and sports information blog.

And so the game continues like this. Bad call after bad call, the Seahawks take a beating. Touchdowns were taken away from the Hawks and holding calls were made that didn't exist. The Steelers seemed to have some sort of immunity from the refs. You'd see the 'Hawks get penalized in one play, then a Steeler would commit the same crime in the next, yet no call would be made. By the end of the first half, the Seahawks had more possession time, more yardage, more completions, more penalties called, and were losing. In the second half, the Steelers picked up their game and the bad calls kept coming. Slowly the Steelers started to gain some breathing room between themselves and the 'Hawks as more bad calls were made and another Touchdown stolen.

Personally, the game left me feeling sick. What was it like for Seahawks fans? Seeing your team go duke it out with another great team and lose is one thing. But seeing them get the crap beat out of them by a team they can't even play (no fighting the black and white) is just sickening.

This site is for the conspiracy theorists. Here's supposed conversation between a sports journalist (FH) and a conspiracy theorist (CS) I know:

Superbowl XL, The Scam of the Millennium

CS: FH, how was Superbowl XL different from any other 'bowl?

FH: It wasn't, everything started out the same. The hype before the game, the coaches, the players, everything seemed pretty normal. During the game I was on the field. Although I'm not able to speak with any of the officials, players or coaches, I am still pretty close. Everything seemed pretty normal and nothing unusual caught my attention.

CS: Until?

FH: Like usual, I stayed way late. A couple hours after the game I was still on the field. I always look for opportunities to get exclusive interviews. Staying late especially after a huge event like this has proven to be an opportunity to meet with some amazing athletes after a game. Sometimes they just like to come out and take one last look at the place before they head home. Tonight was no different, I got some great interviews.

CS: Like who?

FH: HaHa, no names. You know better than that! Watch my column. You'll be impressed by the 2006 season plans that some of our all stars have already. Should be a knock-out season!

CS: Okay, looking forward to it... But what about after that?

FH: Well... After it seemed like everyone was gone for the night I started packing up. I am my own camera man, coming from a smaller organization, so I had some gear to pack. As I was leaving two people from across the field caught my attention. I could barely hear what they were saying, but they were friends. Or at least very friendly. I could only make out some things, like "Good game," and "congratulations." I think I heard someone say something about owing money.

CS: And.....?

FH: Well... I pulled my camera out. Not to take any pictures, just to use the zoom so I could see who it was. At this point I had no idea what was going down. I was hoping to get another exclusive and wanted to see if the person in question was worth running across the field for.

CS: And who was it? Did you get a picture?

FH: Yeah I did. You need to get it on your site asap. I'm uploading it now. Don't tell anyone where you got it, but you're going to fall over when you see it. Tell everyone.