Officiating in Super Bowl Not so Super

While watching Super Bowl XL against the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks, it didn’t take long for me to realize that the media and the abundance of Steelers Fans attending the game weren’t the only people that wanted to see another Lombardi trophy go home to Pittsburgh. The game officials put forth one of the best efforts that I remember in trying to spoil the Seattle Seahawks first appearance in the Super Bowl. Unfortunately for Seattle, the referees succeeded. Whether or not the officials wanted to see Jerome Bettis win the last game of his career in his home town is a mystery that we may never discover. It could be that the officials had just as many jitters as the players and lost focus on certain plays. Those plays ended up being key plays and a determining factor of the game.

For two straight weeks, we all broke down the key match-ups of game, player breakdowns and coaching tendacies. For two straight weeks we all forgot to emphasize the importance in fair and accurate officiating. Super Bowl XL head official Bill Levy and his staff did a bad job in officiating that ultimately cost the Seattle Seahawks the game. There were definitely times throughout the game that Seattle made costly mistakes that did not include the decision making from the referees. It is also hard to blame Pittsburgh for some of the gifts that were handed to them by Seattle as well as the officials. The name of the game is to take what you can get, and Pittsburgh did just that.