Sportscolumn Blog

More columnists are weighing in on the poor officiating in Super Bowl XL. And we actually found someone who defends the crew from Sunday.

[Star-Telegram]: Randy Galloway “The Seahawks got jacked. Many a Super Bowl has had a bad call here and there. But this was by far the worst start-to-finish performance by an officiating crew in 40 years.”

[NY Daily News]: Gary Myers “it wasn’t a fine night for the zebras, either. They made four questionable calls – all against Seattle.”

[Seattle PI]: Ted Miller “Here’s the rub: No intelligent person, and that includes Pittsburgh fans, watched the Steelers 21-10 “victory” and believed it was well-officiated. Period.”

[NY Daily News]: Mike Lupica “It doesn’t change the fact that after a year of blown calls by Paul Tagliabue’s finest – even though finest has become a rather relative notion with even Tagliabue’s top officiating crews – there were more blown calls in the Super Bowl.”

[Boston Globe]: Dan Shaughnessy “No league is better run than the NFL, but its part-time officials had an abysmal postseason and took the Seahawks right out of their first Super Bowl.”

One of the crucial calls came on a hold by Sean Locklear against Clark Haggans. However, some say that, on top of the phantom call, there was a missed call because the person whom Locklear supposedly held was offsides. Was he? Notice below that he’s already in running motion and the ball is not hiked yet.

$100,000 for walking down a carpet?

Just a few hours after the Super Bowl ended and we’re waiting for all the reaction around the league. Mostly it has come from Seattle fans crying in their beer. I’m sure we’ll get plenty of coherent Pittsburgh blogging tomorrow. For now, here are some interesting stories from the SB.

[Football Outsiders]: Montana wanted $100k for appearance

[Random]: Bill Leavy’s home address

[Google]: Super Bowl commercial videos

[Daily Pepper] Super Bowl Ads Winners and Stinkers

[Yahoo]: NY euphoria wins Lingerie Bowl III

Isn’t it amazing that football fans from all walks of life can put aside their differences and collectively agree that Seattle absolutely got robbed in the Super Bowl?

It seems almost any team with an active forum (outside of the Steelers) has fans chiming in on what they perceive to be the worst officiated game in recent memory.

Here is a run down from various fan forums:

Bills
Broncos
Browns
Bucs
Chargers
Colts
Dolphins
Eagles
Jaguars
Patriots
Raiders
Redskins

If you have any more, please add a comment.

Outside of Steelers fans (and even some of them will admit it), everyone believes the officiating in SBXL was the worst in Super Bowl history. A current ESPN sportsnation poll has the poor officiating as the #1 most memorable story from Super Bowl XL.

Here are some opinions by national columnists:

[KC Star]: Jason Whitlock “A group of middle-aged executives trying to keep pace with a group of highly trained 20-something athletes destroyed America’s sports holiday.”

[WashPost]: Michael Wilbon “Seattle should have been ahead by a couple of touchdowns, yet found themselves down 7-3 at halftime because the referees blew a call.”

[FoxSports]: Kevin Hench “Every single questionable, marginal or outright bad call went against the Seahawks.”

[Patsfan.com] Bob George “Capping off a postseason littered with bad officials calls all over the place, it seemed only fitting that referee Bill Leavy and his crew apply the coup de grace in the biggest game of them all. Three bogus calls were what basically did the Seahawks in.”

[ESPN]: Skip Bayless “The first-quarter offensive pass interference called on Darrell Jackson that turned a touchdown into a field goal was robbery enough. But the fourth-quarter holding call on Sean Locklear made you wonder if the refs had even less of Aretha’s r-e-s-p-E-c-t for your Seahawks than I do.”

[ESPN]: Michael Smith “Here’s what referee Bill Leavy’s crew did, point blank: It robbed Seattle.”

[Rochester Democrat]: Bob Matthews “The Steelers may or may not have been the better team. They certainly got the best of the officiating.”

Here’s a petition to review NFL officiating.