Cardinals Lose Super Bowl To Steelers, Referees

After another Super Bowl to remember, it will be hard to forget how terrible the officiating was. I try to never blame officials for outcomes of games because they can only be expected to be so perfect. However, at a championship game, they should be a little more perfect than normal, and this crew was far below par. It would be hard to prove that there was actually favoritism taking place, but four plays clearly stick out in my mind as instances where the Steelers benefited from clearly blown calls or no-calls.

1: There was clearly a clip at about the 32-yard line on James Harrison's touchdown return at the end of the first half. This no-call directly cost the Cardinals seven points. (Mute this video so you don't have to hear the song and look for the clip at :23, again at :40.)

2: Harrison was called for a personal foul on a Cardinals punt for punching Aaron Francisco. The ruling was that the penalty occurred after the change in possession, so the result of the play (punt, Steelers ball) stood and then 15 yards got tacked on. Before punching Francisco and knocking him down with utterly no provocation and receiving a penalty for it, he also punched him in the back while Francisco down down. This was before the ball was downed and before the possession officially changed. See it in this video starting at about the 1:08 mark. The Cardinals lost a first down and a continued possession, and Harrison obviously should have been ejected.

3: After catching what turned out to be the game-winning touchdown, Santonio Holmes performed a pretty funny little touchdown celebration in which he copied LeBron James' now-trademarked pregame chalk-toss up. See it in this video. The problem with this is that it is also clearly the type of celebration that the NFL deems illegal but it wasn't called. This cost the Cardinals 15-yards on the ensuing kickoff and would have made their final drive much more handle-able.

4: The NFL contends that the ruled fumble by Kurt Warner on the Cardinals' last drive was reviewed in the booth and the ruling on the field was upheld. However, it was never announced on the broadcast that the play was under review, and the next play was run nearly immediately. This play could not have been a quick review because of the importance of it and the average review in the NFL takes over two minutes. So how did this one, on the most important play of the season take 20-30 seconds? His arm was clearly moving forward as you can see in this video and the play was clearly not really reviewed. This cost the Cardinals a chance at a final play.

There is no way of knowing what would have happened if any one of these calls went the proper way, but all four were obvious mistakes and all four seem to have been crucial to the outcome of the game. You have to allow for a mistake here and there, but these were four huge, obvious mistakes and all going the same way. Perhaps the refs were not biased, but if they were not, they were totally incompetent.

Side note: The Best Interview Quote of Super Bowl XLIII goes to MVP Holmes for this gem after the game. He was asked if he believed that the Steelers still had a chance after the Cardinals scored with 2:37 to go in the fourth quarter. Holmes responded, "No, we knew we were gonna win. We knew our defense was gonna get us the ball back and we had time to go down and get a score."

Yep, they got you the ball back. They made the other team kickoff after scoring a really easy touchdown.

Once A Linebacker...

It's been three days, so I assume that anyone who cares about this already saw it, but on the off chance that someone did miss it (despite ESPN creating a new network just for this clip), check this out: Ref Decks South Carolina Quarterback

It is really not a very good tackle and as a former linebacker at Kentucky, Wilbur Hackett, Jr. should have known better. You need to wrap up; don't just expect the guy to go down when you hit him high. But then, he did have the element of surprise going for him, since there is no way the QB thought the ref would shuffle his feet into position and drop him with a fore-arm.

This reminds me of the scene in Rushmore where Bill Murray is walking through the school on his cell phone, smoking a cigarette and suddenly jumps into a basketball game with little kids, chases the ball-handler down and swats an 8-year-old's shot off the court before calmly continuing on his way. I couldn't find a good clip of it, but Check it out here (skip to about 1:58 if you don't want to watch the whole trailer, though I can't imagine why not).

The best part of this is clearly the fact that a referee appears to have sized up a ball carrier, used textbook footwork to get into tackling position - knees bent, arms at the ready - and delivered a Madden-style truck-stick tackle inside the redzone in a game that was eventually lost by a touchdown. But the second best part is that the SEC looked into the matter and ruled that it was inadvertent contact.

Which is similar to when I walked into the bank with a gun and a ski mask, demanded they give me all their money, and inadvertently robbed it.

Or perhaps the SEC officials were confused what "inadvertently" means. You know, like how "flammable" and "inflammable" basically mean the same thing. Maybe "inadvertently means "in a careful and deliberate manner" just like "inadvertently" does.

Stop The Presses: Manny Legged Out A Triple

Manny Ramirez had a triple and Red Sox fans gave Bill Buckner a standing ovation. Seriously. Both of those things happened on the same day. No joke.

I didn't think I would be able to find anything else to write about today after that, but then I read that the Chinese government asked the American government to prevent protesters from interfering with the Olympic torch relay as it passes through San Francisco today. This story is wonderful on a number of levels.

When China asked the U.S. government to prevent protests from occurring when the torch gets to San Francisco, there had already been people staging huge demonstrations in San Francisco (hanging monstrous signs off of the cables on the Golden Gate bridge, for instance). Apparently China thinks the U.S. government doesn't allow legal demonstrations. And best of all, they expect people in the biggest hippy-peacenik city in the country to not protest for Tibet when literally the entire sports and political world is watching? The relay could not go through a worse/better U.S. city (depending on your point-of-view). This is a city that annually holds the world's biggest pillow fight.

I hope the people of San Francisco hold such a spectacular protest that the Chinese are scared into ending the Torch relay and the U.S. pulls out of the Olympic Opening ceremony. And I LOVE the idea of the Torch relay (though I admittedly cannot stand the Opening Ceremony).

Last night I worked at KCAL and had to watch the Lakers game. What is worse: watching a Laker game or listening to a Laker game? Tough call. NBA referees should be ashamed of themselves for the calls they do not make. Kobe Bryant simply cannot dribble without carrying-over. No one can make a layup or dunk or take a first step on a drive without traveling. Every one of them could punch a guy and spin around in disbelief if a foul called. It is sickening.

But the Lakers lost and Brandon Roy torched Kobe Bryant time after time, so it wasn't a total waste of time for me.

Note to NBA teams: if you make a three-pointer, on the next possession whoever gets the ball first between Sasha Vujacic, Vlad Radmonovich, and Jordan Farmar, will shoot a three-pointer to answer. It happens every single time.

Dick Vitale came out with his top five for college basketball in 2009. The season was over for maybe an hour before he taped it. And who knows what players will leave for the NBA before then. Screw Dick Vitale and screw ESPN for airing him.

Finally, I used to not care about the Phillies. They were just another NL East team. I hate them now. And while Baseball Tonight may be my favorite show on television, I cannot watch a single other game's highlights on days when the Mets lose. Those smug jerks and their game-winning hits. I hate them.