Never said that the refs changed the outcome. The Seahawks didn't play well. The Steelers had 3 good plays that won the game for them. That being said, I'm not the only one who saw a poorly called game. Many sports writers and unaligned viewers feel the same way. Check back into reality, please. Your Steelers won and nobody is taking that away from you. Congrats to them for coming a long way on the road. But the NFL has a problem: its refereeing stinks.
This article says it best:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/football/13801313.htm
......
"But make no mistake about Super Bowl XL, the performance of referee Bill Leavy and his crew overshadowed Pittsburgh's heroics and Seattle's blunders.
Paul Tagliabue's league has an officiating crisis. Bogus, inconsistent flag-throwing and rule-interpreting is making the national pastime difficult to take seriously. So far, only Joey Porter has demonstrated the necessary courage to address what we all see.
Many of these part-time, 50-year-old referees don't know what they're doing and can't keep up with the action."
......
I don't agree with all of the article, but the quote above is spot-on, IMO.
Specifically, what are the Left Coast whiners whining about?
So essentially you're saying "bad officiating" because of ONE PLAY. Please get real.
As for the poor quality of referee'ing in the NFL, please don't presume to lecture to a Steeler fan about that. We had an AFC title game taken away from us on the penultimate play of the game that placed Tennessee into field goal range, and had a 28-10 stomping of Indianapolis turned into a 21-18 thriller by an absolutely hideous misinterpretation of the rules by the officials. Cowher has repeatedly embarrassed the zebras over the last 14 years by pointing (often on the field, during the game) to places in the rulebook where they've been wrong.
The NFL needs professional referees. Their refs need to be schooled in the rules and drilled on film during the week. The replay rule needs to be revised so that it's handled the way it was designed in the Big Ten: review every play by independent officials. It shouldn't be necessary for a coach--often stymied by the refusal of the home replay team to air video they know is detrimental to their cause--to have to challenge the call. Officials should be self-policing. In at least one College conference they are. They also need to use the scorecards they score every week on officiating crews to eliminate all but the very best squads from the playoffs--just as all but the best teams are eliminated. To simply reward officials with at least one playoff spot because they've ref'd during the season is an atrocity. And they need to use the grading system to "cut" those officials and teams with the lowest scores at the start of the next season--not just a handfull of truly terrible officials at the season's end as they do now.
To their credit, Homgren's team was better than their fans. They admitted they dropped balls. They admitted they overthrew receivers. They admitted they failed to cover receivers. Their coaching staff prepared poorly for some plays. Their clock management at the end of both halves was genuinely inept.
Believe me, Coach Holmgren and his staff aren't going to waste one second next season telling their players they lost because of poor officiating. They didn't. They played a better team and they lost. The Seahawks know it, and they'll be a better team next year because they'll grow from it. Their fans need to do the same.