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Before you decide to read any further, dear readers, I have to be up front with you -- I didn't really get to see any of the Super Bowl. So be advised: Everything that follows is completely based on secondhand information and a few highlights I saw early Monday morning.
I fully intended to watch the game, of course. But then Tom Brady walked out to do the coin flip -- a complete surprise to me! -- looking especially dreamy in a velvet suit coat with his shirt open a Hasselhoff-esque three buttons. Fab-u-lous!
Anyway, I was immediately beset by a particularly brutal case of the vapors, and by the time I came to, the Steelers were in the midst of their trophy presentation ceremony. It was a great honor to have Tom Terrific on my TV screen -- that goes without saying -- I just think there should have been some type of warning.
Headlines ...
Seattle: "Joey Porter apologizes, says Jerramy Stevens' hands prove that not all of him is soft"
Pittsburgh: "No one seems to care that Pitt lost to Georgetown yesterday"
Detroit: "Excitement of Super Bowl makes Detroit residents hopeful they'll one day get a pro football team of their own"
National: "Super Bowl won by team that played better, just as analysts predicted"
Ten Things I Thought While Using My Terrible Towel As A Coffee Filter ...
1. Not to pile on Stevens, but if you had to pick a Super Bowl goat, could there be a better choice than the guy with a pregrown goat beard? Plus, when you add on the fact that he catches passes like he has hooves, well ... it's an easy choice.
2. Don't be surprised to see Joey Porter's Super Bowl ring go up on eBay in the coming days. There's no way he'll be able to accept being part of a team that clinched its title with a trick play -- Antwaan Randle El's touchdown pass to Hines Ward -- instead of just running it right up the middle of Seattle's defense on every down. Trick plays aren't football! That's being soft! And while I can't be sure since I wasn't there, I trust Porter called his team out for being soft after the game was over.
3. Texas A&M should drop its lawsuit against the Seahawks over the whole "12th Man" thing. Sunday night proved there's a major difference in what the term means for each of them. For the Aggies, the "12th Man" is a figurative reference to their fans being like an additional player on the field. As the crowd at Ford Field showed, however, the "12th Man" for the SeaHawks is a literal reference to the number of fans they have.
4. Of those 12 Seahawks fans, the vast majority of them (nine) seem to be complaining that the officials robbed them of a sure win. And yes, there were some questionable calls that didn't go Seattle's way. But to win big games, you have to make big plays. (And to write big columns you have to use big clichés, but I digress.) The Steelers made the big plays they needed to make to win the game: Roethlisberger's pass to Hines Ward before the end of the first half, Willie Parker's run at the beginning of the third quarter and Randle El's game-clinching touchdown pass. What big plays did the Seahawks make? Not really any on the level of those three Steelers plays. Yes, Tom Rouen booming punts through the back of the end zone for touchbacks were mighty impressive -- but not all that helpful to Seattle's cause.
5. In his pregame speech, Mike Holmgren put $73,000 -- the Super Bowl winner's share -- in one dollar bills on a table in Seattle's locker room to motivate his team. Oddly, no one questioned what Holmgren was doing with 73 grand in ones. The only thing I can figure is that he was less than impressed with the quality of the strippers he encountered in Windsor and found himself flush with extra singles. Or he dispatched a Seahawks staffer to get them at a bank. But I like my first story better.
6. Thanks to Andy Reid in last year's Super Bowl and Holmgren in this year's, you can really see why the West Coast offense has the name it has. The West Coast is more laid-back than the East Coast. It's just a cultural thing. That's why in the West Coast offenses of Holmgren and Reid, when there's less than a minute left in a half, they don't hurry. It's just like: "Chill out, dudes. We've got plenty of time. Just relax. If we get in position to score, that's fine. If not, that's cool, too. No need to rush. It's better to get off one play we can totally wrap our minds around than five or six plays that just don't feel totally right, you dig?" Whereas teams that don't run that kind of West Coast offense, you know, actually try to conserve the clock and score and stuff. It's sort of a subtle difference.
7. It was cool to see all the living Super Bowl MVPs introduced before kickoff. Two things stuck out for me though. One, I thought it was rude of Larry Brown not to have Neil O'Donnell escort him down the aisle. And two, I was sad to discover that Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw have apparently died.
8. The national anthem duet by Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin was pretty good, but the NFL could have saved a few bucks and still achieved the same effect by using players. Shaun Alexander could have done a fair interpretation of Neville's voice, and Casey Hampton could have been an almost exact body double for Franklin. As could the Escalade that Hines Ward won as the MVP.
9. Ben Roethlisberger is appearing on "Letterman" Monday night, where he will shave his beard on-air and get a nice sum of money from Gillette for doing so. Had the Seahawks won, I suppose Matt Hasselbeck would have gone on the show and balded -- which really wouldn't have been very compelling television, if you think about it. So it's definitely good that Pittsburgh won.
10. Finally, I want to go on record as a big Jerome Bettis fan. The guy is a class act, and while that means nothing coming from me, I truly enjoyed watching him play throughout his career. I just hope he doesn't let himself go in retirement.
DJ Gallo is a regular contributor to ESPN The Magazine, as well as the founder and sole writer of the award-winning sports satire site SportsPickle.com. He also contributes headlines to "The Onion."
