I was just watching the local news and the sports anchor was talking about the Super Bowl and kept referring to Cowher as "likable". Huh?

He's a man's man, a footballer in the finest tradition. He was hewn by the Western Pennsylvania range, and scrapped for what he got in the NFL, eventually ascending to def. coor. under Marty Schottenheimer in KC. Then, his hometown team came calling when its legendary coach retired, and he answered the call. Now, he has stepped to the dais where sat Noll. He will be god in Pennsylvania 'til the end of his days.

Tommy, he dove at the knees of the runner - WHO HE TACKLED IN DOING SO....in a game with a ton of poor officiating that may have been the WORST call of all.....the officials should have convened on that and waved it off.

ok, so having watched Am. football 4 times in my life I admit I don't really know what I'm talking about, but can someone please explain how in a game with the most frequent and longest stoppages of any that I've seen (and I come from a land where cricket goes for 5 days), that so many blatant and one-sided mistakes can be made by the refs on the field without any chance for review by a third party?

that was ridiculous, as well as being a boring game for but about 5 minutes. I want my 4 hours back

Like what? The only absolutely blown call I saw was the Hasselbeck penalty on the interception. As for the other possibles:

+ Roethlisberger appeared to break the plane of the end zone on the TD. The line judge is in damn near perfect position, and he made the call. Replay upheld it. Remember, to break the plane, only the slightest bit of the ball has to touch any part of that white line, and it's a touchdown.

+ There was a pushoff in the end zone on the Seattle TD that was called back. Maybe it's a touchy call, but he did it about six feet in front of the official. Of course Steve Young and Michael Irvin don't agree. Being offensive players, they wouldn't want that called.

+ I already stated my view on the holding call.

+ Both balls Hasselbeck through downfield on the sideline were incomplete because he only had one foot in bounds.

+ On the Hasselbeck fumble, after review he was ruled down by contact, which was a pretty tough call to make livel, but it was the right call.

Just for full disclosure: I had no dogs in this fight. I'm also very anti-instant replay.

Instant replay is the worst. There's still bad calls and the game takes longer. Also you have to hear assholes debate the merits of challenging calls now.

I thought it looked pretty obvious that Roethisberger was stopped right at the goal line, The ball was low on his body and basically rolled out once he was down, then he pushed it across the line. The line judge appeared to be spotting it, when I assume the head referee ran in an they briefly discussed it before ruling it a touchdown.
A commentator on ESPN.com hit the nail on the head on the offensive pass interference call. It would be like calling a hand check foul on a basketball player in the seventh game of the NBA Finals.
I just felt like the refs who did a good job of not calling too many penalties, made the worst calls in the most inopportune time and had too much of an impact on the game.

From what I remember watching:

The ball was low on his body after the Seattle player made contact, which was after the ball had already broken the plane. The defensive contact pushed the ball back out of the end zone, down and toward Roethlisberger's ribs.

I don't have anything to go on, but I thought the line judge signaled touchdown with no discussion. He was a little slow on the call, but he still made it on his own. Actually, if you go here and view #6, you can see the touchdown being signalled while the head referee is still completely behind the play.

Where's the Bus from? I don't think they mentioned it enough this week.

My feelings on the linesman was that he didn't make the call initially and then saw Ben move the ball into the end-zone and signalled it then - I thought that the better call would have been to not call a TD and then look at it on film.

I basically feel the same way. I think they should have called him down and then check the video. If they clearly saw the tip of the ball break the plane, then they should have overruled it. In my mind, the line judge never saw it break the plane and they based their call off of Roethisberger's placement of it after he was actually down.

i agree with FU on his assesment of all the calls EXCEPT the holding call. i didn't see no stinkin' hold.

also, with the rothlisberger TD...you can pretty much guarantee that whatever call they made on the field was the one that would stay. they never have the balls to overturn the call made on the field on something that tight. they always fall back on the "no indisputable evidence" to overturn. well there was no indisputable evidence to show it was a TD either.

Bean thought the beagle/whippet mix was on the ball.

the song selections were pretty pedestrian but my guess is they had to play "top forty" for middle america.

mick was fairly laughable during satisfaction. " and i twy...and i twy...." at least that's how it sounded on my set. BUT i could listen to those guitar riffs forever.

Some billy lawyer at the party i was at was like "Man, why ain't they playin' Love in Vain."

I kept one eye on him and one on the door the rest of the night.

I don't have any gripe with this other than my hatred for instant replay. I like calls being made on the field, right or wrong. It's just part of the game.

I still believe they made the right call. Now, let's pretend for a moment that there is no instant replay. If he had called no TD, I would have been fine with it, even though it appears to me that he broke the plane. It was a very close call, and the reality of human error isn't much of a problem for me.

No shit... I was laughing "twy... twy" it was like the upper class British twit that he really is... remember the guy on Brideshead Revisited...

But I think Mick has always been a cartoon, silly... but fun. Keith and Ron riffing against each other is a ritual, however, of spiritual significance.

Anyone find a torrent for the commercials?

I did but it's in mp4 format and for some reason i think the files might be corrupted. But that could be just me.

That game sucked... but the right team won. There are truly, at least, six teams in the AFC better than anyone in the NFC.

The NFC is the National League of football.

Thank you Dana, I needed this after a stressful last 24 hours

WESTERN pennsylvania.
that dude bugs the hell out me.

i thought the stones were horrible.
they sounded like they couldn't hear each other and the famous drum break in "satisfaction" was flubbed all three times.

but it was still better than Paul was last year.

lets go back to having stupid 18 year old pop stars playing with Aerosmith.

I assumed that "western" was implied before the second occurence of Pennsylvania, since I made the graf specific to Fort Duquesne/Pitt//Pittsburgh and the Rooney family's NFL franchise. But, yes, to clarify, I meant that Cow'a will be a god in Western PA, same as Joe Pa and Chuck Noll.

If you go to IFilm they've got a whole page of all the commercials. There's really nothing that's worth downloading.