If its not on the menu the next (first) time I go to Pittsburgh, I’m gonna move there and open a restaurant. What would it be? Meat, cheese, a bun, and hurtling through the air. Catch it on your toes and I’ll give it to you free. Congratulations to the Steelers and the great city of Pittsburgh for winning another Super Bowl title. And congratulations to the Cardinals, for making it an interesting contest. I happen to be a pretty big sports nut, so I will respectfully decline to say the game was played well (18 penalties? How many personal fouls?) but it took a cue from recent Super Bowls and kept from being a stinker of a game.
And now for my rant. This may, deep down, be the single most important rant I will ever put on my blog. Why do we have instant replay? Of course, I know why. I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me, so I will let a professor I had in Grad school do it; “Follow the money”. Or listen to Cuba. Translated? More commercial spots. Its not to get it right, because if it were there would at least have been a cursory review of the last play of the Super Bowl. We would be able to challenge more plays. And outright blown calls that result in wins or losses would be reversed after the game.
I could go on and on with examples from previous games and previous years about the ludicrous nature of grown men discussing the intricacies of “Control” and “Feet touching” and “was his arm moving forward?”, but I already get more of that than I need to from Al, John, Chris, and the rest. If you need a second reason; the nerds are to blame. “We can cover the field from how many angles? We can locate the first down line to within how many millimeters? How can we not see everything clearly? Put more cameras out there!”
If I thought anyone would care or agree with me, I would make a plea to the NFL, “Please get rid of instant replay, I have learned my lesson!” What is the lesson, you ask? Human beings are and always will be fallible, so get used to it, suck it up, stop whining, and accept that as long as football is played by humans, watched by humans, and policed by humans, there will be errors, mistakes, and disagreements. Ignore the gamblers who are predisposed to being whiny, sniveling and angry anyway. You want money? Go out and earn it. Please, NFL, don’t drive me back to watching 3 hour baseball games because you got greedy and tried to draw out your already long games to lengths that make me unable to watch even a single one.
For the record I am a Bucs fan. When not rooting for them, I usually root for the underdog, but have always had a soft spot in my heart for the black and gold.
