The real reason the Seahawks lost

http://espn.starwave.com/i/magazine/new/jeffrey_maier.jpg

Reading what? This column which pretty much makes the same argument as the Slate piece?

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs05/columns/story?columnist=smith_michael&id=2320683&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos2

I've heard a lot of whining about the push-off interference, but to me that was interference, no question. The illegal block on Hasselbeck was wrong, straight up. I thought Ben didn't get in, and I'm sure that when the refs really look at it, they'll agree.

But the refs get stuff wrong, just like the umps get plays wrong all the time. Almost every pitch around the edges of the plate in baseball is questionable, and I've seen a ton of bad calls at first, on balls that were called fair, etc. If anything, baseball holds inaccuracy as a virtue, as gamesmanship. Football refs are held to a standard that I personally think is ridiculous.

* yank that judge
* referees "suck" at every game. Surely the Shawks benefitted by some referee calls throughout the reason in small doses. It all balances out at the end.
* Also, the inevitable "but the Shawks played too many home games and had an easy ass game schedule" counter-defense, snore, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, etc.
* It was too beautiful a day yesterday to just sit in a bar and watch a game... (for me personally)... I got lots of photo work and research done yesterday as a result.

* Shaun is no longer clapping like a homosexual

At least in baseball they don't decide the championship by a single game, which makes the possibility of having bad calls determine the outcome much less likely. Sure calling balls & strikes is always iffy at the edges of the plate, but over time the sheer number of those calls causes them to average out. Also, in baseball, the umpire calls do not interrupt the normal flow of the game, because they are part of the normal flow of the game. In the Superbowl yesterday it was like every time the Seahawks made a potentially decisive play you had to grit your teeth for the inevitable flag that would take it away.

I disagreed with the pass interference and the bad block calls.

xpost

right, but it could be said that winning that one game gave them the momentum (lazy sports cliche alert, but still) to win the series, which of course gets them in the w.s. or something.

The scenario is irrelevant. The potential for damage is just as high. What if the play had happened with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in game seven? The fact that it didn't doesn't change the fact that the umpires are highly flawed and capable of making a series-changing decision due to not having enough information available to them. If it does happen, will you stop watching the World Series?

Obviously, each instance in a World Series baseball game is far less likely to affect the outcome than each instance in a Super Bowl game. (And the fact that each event is so crucial is why instant reply exists.) But the game was not won or lost on any of the plays in this Super Bowl. Jackson pass interfered, but the Hawks still had a chance to convert; Roethlisberger could have scored on the next play; the Steelers could have scored whether Hasselbeck's block was clean or not; etc.

I mean, if you want to blame something, blame Holmgren's ATROCIOUS clock management at the end of each half.

I'd also like to point out that the refs in football have to watch twenty-two (or more) different points of action to look for a foul, each point governed by hundreds of nuanced subrules. Baseball umpires almost always have one point of action to consider: the ball. It is a lot easier to get things right in baseball and yet it still gets messed up all the time.

(except for those steelers trick plays. those were great.)