The Notebook, Super Bowl

America got Faith Hill and Jennifer Hudson on pre-recorded tracks. America got Bruce Springsteen’s crotch in their collective faces.

America got General David Petreaus flipping the coin and an Air Force flyover to ruminate on Pat Tillman’s memory, that confusing intersection of America’s sport, our ideals, and the histories we write.

We waded through a bevy of depressing commericals – CareerBuilder.com and Conan excepted – and we slogged through human interest story after human interest story in the several hour lead-up to kickoff. (Ben Graham, honestly?)

But none of the spectacle – save perhaps Hudson’s touching performance, artiface be damned – was nearly as messy or contentious as the game itself. Super Bowl 43 wasn’t overwhelmed by its trappings or upstaged at its own party.

A great Super Bowl? Maybe.

For three quarters the game was a sloppy mess of questionable calls, tepid play, missed opportunities, and confusing football. Before the electric fourth quarter, I couldn’t help thinking the game had all of the appeal of a make-out session with someone’s grandmother.

Football isn’t required to be sexy. But there was a disturbing lack of artistry… to the Cardinals passing attack, the Steelers zone blitz, the Cardinals pass coverage, and the Steelers running game. All the necessary components were there but they were operating in strange ways.

The chess match that begun two weeks ago almost threatened to sink the contest before it started. Certainly, Ken Whisenhunt and Todd Haley looked like they out-thought themselves by the Cardinals poor early performance on offense. Larry Fitzgerald almost didn’t make a reception throughout the entire first half. Only on the Cardinals final drive of the half was Larry finally targeted: one incomplete and one stick moving 12 yard reception.

Even as the Steelers marched up and down the field, they repeatedly faltered at the precipice of early domination. When the field condensed and Pittsburgh’s physicality should have cleared repeated touchdown paths, the Arizona defense outhit and outhustled the Steelers, holding the offense to a mere 10 points.

With so many of the game’s storylines veering sharply off script, James Harrison’s brilliant read-and-react interception return touchdown became all the more crucial. While I’ll not deny Santonio Holmes’s well deserved MVP trophy, the voters could just have easily split the award between Harrison and fellow outside linebacker LaMarr Woodley who both carried the game through its indecisive moments.


On the flipside, had Arizona completed the comeback, Larry Fitzgerald’s astounding fourth quarter resuscitation would certainly have merited consideration for the best performance. As amazing as the 64 yard catch and run was, the one yard twisting touchdown pluck spoke more to Fitzgerald’s vintage.

But, undeniably, the Cardinals near comeback was kicked off by Darnell Dockett. He nearly singlehandedly killed Pittsburgh’s first and second drives of the fourth quarter. Even the impressive five tackle, two sack stat line doesn’t do justice to the havoc Dockett caused throughout. Had the Cardinals hung on for the win or perhaps found Fitzgerald outleaping a gang of black-and-gold defenders for the winning score as time expired, Dockett still might have been my MVP.

If anything, however, the Super Bowl isn’t about possibilities, it’s not about what might have been. A play here and a play there might have crowned the Dallas Cowboys the dynasty of the 70s, not these same victorious Steelers.

I cringe at throwing out phrases like clutch, but there was an undeniable aspect in the on-field relationship between Ben Roethlisberger and Santonio Holmes that came into full flower on the Steelers final substantive drive.


Roethlisberger continues to be the insanely athletic quarterback who instead of making it look easy, insists on making it look as hard as possible. Luckily for him Santonio Holmes displayed enough grace and speed to counterbalance Big Ben’s bizarre aesthetic for the highlight reels.

I was lucky enough to be staring right at Holmes’s shoes during the game winner. Out of assembled company, shouts of disbelief rang loud. But it was clear, I just shook my head in amazement.

Among coworkers this morning, we wondered if Roethlisberger was simply too stupid to know how to lose. It’s not of course to call Roethlisberger a moron, rather to note that the game is often played better when it isn’t overthought, or thought through at all.

I can imagine a scenario where there wasn’t a single play called on the game winning drive. A pure kind of football that beguiles the game’s tendencies toward meticulously planning and rote drills. Just get open, I’ll find you.

We might have witnessed Larry’s playoffs, but this was Santonio’s game. James Harrison’s game. Heath Miller’s game. LaMarr Woodley’s game. And, yes, finally Ben Roethlisberger’s game.

Unfortunately, the game was Terry McAuley’s too.

I received a text from harDCore reading, “The fix is in,” after the bullshit roughing the passer call on Dockett. Sitting next to DJ Noid, a Seahawks fan still smarting from Super Bowl 40, I heard the notes of disgust as the Steelers continued to receive the benefit of the doubt seemingly again and again from the officiating crew.

Officiating professional football is a ridiculously difficult task. Still, one hopes in the big games that it doesn’t become a storyline. Not the case with 43.

In a game so physical, the coach’s might argue that the repeated unnecessary roughness calls were in fact very necessary… to intimidate, to put force behind words.

And for most coaches there’s always a certain situations where they’ll take the penalty. But there was something noticeably excessive in the tilt towards Pittsburgh. Perhaps the fact that both challenges thrown by Whisenhunt he won clearly says something.

And the fact that 43’s last substantive play, the Woodley strip sack of Kurt Warner, wasn’t reviewed by the booth calls into question the quality of the game’s officiating.

Perhaps it would have been simply a hollow exercise as Mike Pereira, the NFL’s head of officiating suggests, but sadly it might take something away from a very exciting and earned Steelers championship.

And maybe that’s where I’ll leave it. Pittsburgh earned this one. Arizona was exciting. They were merchants of hope, gleeful anarchists stumbling upon the king’s treasure room.

But the Steelers reaffirm the difficult road traveled. We know how they’ll wear the crown, relatively classy and with a strong deference to past accomplishments. I still don't know if it's a great Super Bowl. But I've got no problems with our champions.