METAMUVILLE - I was planning on writing about the whiny maggots running their bitch-holes unremittingly since Sunday night. About how on the flight home to Seattle I enjoyed many a "this is a confirmed fact!" as to why, in the name of all that's holy, the refs felt compelled to call untimely penalties that the Seahawks did, inconvenient though this detail is, actually commit. "Steeler fans sent death threats to the refs" was my second favorite. Number one with a bullet: with the game ending at 10pm on the last night of Super Bowl week, the NFL wanted to ensure that the Steeler fans stayed to drink and thereby bring extra riches to the proprietors of Detroit. So they fixed the game, you see.
There's little sense in arguing with these fans. They're not conversant about the rules or the plays in question. Their idea of evidence—and something I've heard three times today alone—is that "everyone I know says this." Of that, I have little doubt. I've heard nothing but the creepy low moan of mass masturbation since I arrived at Sea-Tac.
That the Hawks' receivers were pushing off all night and finally got flagged—thank Christ—in the red zone is immaterial. (I blew my voice out screaming about all the offensive pass interference.) That there's really a rule that on an interception return, you can't hit a non-ball-carrier below the waist is immaterial. That the holding was so flagrant that Clark Haggans was leaning backward as he ran to the ball-carrier is immaterial. What the rest of the world calls "calling it tight," Seattle fans call "cheating." What the rest of the world calls "not being able to finish drives within the rules," Seattle fans call "a dominant performance thwarted by the refs." And what the rest of the world saw as self-destructive sloppy play, as an inability to put away an opponent that was playing very poorly, Seattle fans saw as a world championship denied.
I was planning on writing much more, but I see the petulant whining has become a national story, so I'll leave you with a link. Moral: those who complain about not getting respect might try granting it.