Someone needs to photoshop this LOL
http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/story/5509834p-4965313c.html
NFL adds fuel to conspiracy theory flames
JOHN MCGRATH; THE NEWS TRIBUNE Published: February 7th, 2006 02:30 AM
DETROIT – Say this for Detroit: No longer can it be called The City that Never Sweeps.
On Monday, as tens of thousands of tourists headed for the airport, downtown Detroit showed no visible hangover from the world’s largest 10-block party.
Broken bottles, empty cans, and discarded food containers already were off the sidewalks. Patches of snow sparkled in the sun.
The major cleanup project remaining after Super Bowl XL, it seems, belongs to the NFL, whose task over the next few days will be to debunk conspiracy theories.
You’ve heard the accusations: The league favored the Steelers because owner Dan Rooney belongs to the old-boy network that pulls strings for commissioner Paul Tagliabue...
The league favored the Steelers because Jerome Bettis’ return to his hometown was an easy-to-follow saga for indifferent television viewers in faraway places …
The league favored the Steelers because it is headquartered in New York, and thus harbors an East Coast bias against West Coast markets such as Seattle …
The league favored the Steelers because their throwback jerseys are way cooler than any officially licensed Seahawks apparel to make cash registers go ka-ching …
While all of this is so much hokum – how was it that the NFL’s aversion to West Coast champions didn’t prevent the San Francisco 49ers from winning four Super Bowls between 1985 and 1995? – it can’t be denied that officials assigned by the NFL made one atrocious call that cost the Seahawks a touchdown, and another bad call that prevented Seattle from attempting, at the very least, a routine field goal.
Coach Mike Holmgren was as reluctant to point fingers Monday morning as he was in the postgame interview compound Sunday night. His tone on both occasions was diplomatic.
But Holmgren on Monday was candid about one aspect of Super Bowl XL: Pittsburgh’s conspicuous home-field advantage.
The Seahawks understood the hostile climate that awaited them in Ford Field. Days before kickoff, corporate tickets available to league business associates living in places like Dallas, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles suddenly showed up on eBay. Weighing a weekend trip to Detroit to watch the Seahawks and Steelers against making some easy money on an Internet auction, those tickets wound up in the hands of Steelers fans.
But it wasn’t until the pregame introduction of former Super Bowl MVP winners that the intensity of the Pittsburgh faction become fully evident. While most of the MVPs heard polite applause, Steelers’ icons Lynn Swann and Franco Harris were treated to a heroes’ welcome. Of the 68,206 fans on hand, it seemed as though 60,000 of them waved “Terrible Towels.”
Holmgren had more on his mind Sunday night than the emotional makeup of the audience. After the Seahawks’ 21-10 defeat, however, he talked with his grown children.
“They were pretty emotional – their father had lost a football game,” said Holmgren.
OK, coach, we’ll consider the source.
Their beef?
“Steelers towels were on sale at every souvenir stand in the stadium,” Holmgren said, noting that blue-and-green Seahawks towels were not available.
“That,” he said, “seems pretty unfair.”
The preponderance of Steelers fans in the house did not, at first, appear to faze the “visitors” at the neutral site. While quarterback Matt Hasselbeck worked the flanks of the Pittsburgh defense with a succession of precision, high-percentage passes, the Steelers were penalized for two false starts. (Pittsburgh was flagged only once thereafter.)
But the trappings of a road game took an eventual toll. There’s a human element in sports, even with pros competing on an elite level, and the human element insists it’s more difficult to win when the crowd is overwhelmingly against you.
“This is the first Super Bowl I’ve ever been a part of – as an assistant or a head coach – where one team had that many fans behind it,” said Holmgren.
Actually, previous Super Bowls have featured local teams, with mixed results: San Francisco played at nearby Stanford Stadium in 1985 (the 49ers beat Miami), and the Los Angeles Rams played at Pasadena in 1980 (they lost to Pittsburgh). The Oakland Raiders twice made a relatively short trip to Southern California, beating Philadelphia in 1981 and losing to Tampa Bay in 2003.
But the crowds in those instances were not as wildly animated as the one that cheered on the Steelers in Detroit.
More than “Terrible Towels” were at work. Amid the buildup to Super Bowl XL, mayor Kwame Kilpatrick not only presented Bettis with a symbolic key to the city, he told the running back how he wished for him to bring the Vince Lombardi trophy to Detroit.
Mayors will be mayors, to be sure, and Super Bowl tickets are a free-market enterprise. The NFL cannot control allegiances.
Souvenir stands are something else: Either make rooting accoutrements available for fans of both teams, as Holmgren suggested, or ban such items as “Terrible Towels” altogether.
No, the 9-1 ratio of Pittsburgh fans at Ford Field wasn’t responsible for the Seahawks’ sloppiest performance since the season opener at Jacksonville. But the mere appearance of league-sponsored partisanship feeds the imagination of Seahawks’ conspiracy theorists.
After watching replays of Darrell Jackson’s touchdown catch – called back because of slight and incidental contact – the imagination is one hungry beast.
John McGrath: 253-597-8742, ext. 6154 john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com