"I do give Ben a lot of credit for 'fessing up that he didn't get the ball to the line until after he was down."
Ben did not "fess up" to anything-he said he didn't THINK the ball made it over. Obviously there is no way for a QB who is flying through the air to have any idea one way or the other-that's the job of the official.
"my beef hasn't been with the Stealers anyway, even though the name now fits."
It only fits in the minds of whining, sour grapes sore losers. Intelligent people with any amount of football knowledge know it is completely bogus.
"Thus we have most fans, the league & most personnel connected in any way with football and SB XL panting & drooling for one particular team team to win. If that team happens to be the best that day, great! If not, they are all too happy to take it any way they can."
Sorry, the idea that the media or the NFL was drooling for the Steelers to win is simply ridiculous. Even if there was such a thing as media or NFL bias, why would it be towards a team from a city with one of the smallest television markets in the league? And anyone who watched a ref stare at the perfectly clear Polamalu interception on replay against the Colts and overturn it could not POSSIBLY believe there is any officiating favoritism towards the Steelers.
As for the media, they were bending over backwards trying to portray the Steelers as the mean, tough, trash-talking heavily-favored team and the Seahawks as the quiet, dignified but vastly underrated underdog-the media was actually salivating over the possibility of a big Seahawks upset, not over a Steelers' win. You obviously did not watch or read much of the coverage leading up to the SB.
Nobody took anything, Seattle got some bad breaks, so did the Steelers, Seattle made more mistakes and fewer big plays than the Steelers, the Steelers won the game. End of story.
Obviously any comments I made regarding the league, etc. prefering one team applies to this SB & the two teams playing in it. Period. I've never said one word about some grand season-long conspiracy or playoff conspiracy or anything of the sort.
Or even a single game conspiracy. Only that there was a clear and almost universal sentimental favorite and that that sentimental favorite eventually "won".
BTW, objective sports columnists across America agree the refs were lousy at best. Here's one from my local paper:
This Bowl officially tainted
By Furman Bisher | Friday, February 10, 2006, 04:52 PM
http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/sportscolumns/entries/2006/02/10/even_ioc_cant_g.html