The truth is out there.
Posted on 02/07/2006 6:58:40 PM PST by bikepacker67
As fans continued to weigh in on calls by officials during the Super Bowl, a group has set up an online petition claiming the "NFL is fixed."
The petition, at http://new.petitiononline.com/nfl12006/petition.html, says "We, the fans of the NFL, will no longer stand by and allow our pure game to be corrupted by blatant bias."
The petitions ask fans for suggestions on how the problem can be fixed.
Seahawks fans are voicing outrage over what they say were game-robbing calls by officials in the Super Bowl.
In one, Darrell Jackson was called for pushing Chris Hope away as he broke to catch Matt Hasselbeck's pass in the back of the end zone. Replays showed Jackson extended his arm, but Jackson argued vainly there was no push involved. Seattle settled for a 47-yard field goal and a 3-0 lead -- instead of a 7-0 one.
Later, referees ruled that Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger got the ball to touch the goal-line plane on his 1-yard score with 1:55 left, which put the Seahawks behind for good, 7-3.
Referee Bill Leavy upheld the call after a replay review. Holmgren then upbraided Leavy on his way off the field at halftime.
Holmgren walked over to Leavy, a fifth-year referee calling his first Super Bowl, and could be seen angrily telling him, "It wasn't even close."
The second half brought more Seahawks frustration.
Officials flagged first-year starting right tackle Sean Locklear for holding when Stevens did finally catch a pass, a 17-yard grab at the Steelers 2 with 12:11 left and Seattle trailing 14-10. On the next play, Casey Hampton bowled through Pro Bowl blockers Robbie Tobeck and Steve Hutchinson for a sack.
One play after that, Hasselbeck threw his game-breaking interception to doom Seattle's last chance of the game and of a suddenly lost season.
At a welcome home celebration at Qwest Field on Monday, Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren took a shot at the Super Bowl officials, saying he knew the game was going to be tough, but he didn't know the Hawks were going to have to play the guys in the striped shirts as well.
Horse puckey. I've forgotten more about football than most of these johnny-come-lately Seahawk fans who just jumped on the bandwagon this season. As another poster correctly pointed out, there were MANY calls that could have gone either way. Yes, the Steelers got the benefit of some, maybe even a small majority of those, but the Seahawks got some breaks as well. Of course, nobody mentions those, because losers just want to look for excuses.
Had the serial errors been in favor of Seattle, the Seahawks would have won 30-3 and you want to talk about "whining"...?
Talk about someone who doesn't know football. Sheesh. Change one of those early calls and the game is different from there on out. Who's to say how it would have turned out? If the Steelers fell behind, do you think they might have run some different plays, done something different? Might Seattle have played differently? Oh, I see, let's cherry pick a few plays out of the game, have all those go in other team's favor and make up a score. Sure, that's rational. ROFL
As for Joey Porter accusing the refs of trying to take the game away from the Steelers in Indy, he is just as wrong as the people whining now.
ROFL and LMAO. That's about the funniest thing I've seen on FR. Thanks! :-)
Welcome to football, where yards and time of possession are often misleading. POINTS is what matters. If the team with the most yards and TOP was declared the winner, maybe Pittsburgh wouldn't have ripped off those long TD plays. This is the same garbage we heard from the Gore people in 2000. "Gore got more votes! WAAAAAAA!!!" Well, if the popluar vote decided the election, not the electoral, Bush would have had a different game plan. He got the votes that counted, just like the Steelers did what they needed to do to win the game - SCORE.
All you had to do was ask ;-)
at the time
...and the video replay CONFIRMS his thought.
No it doesn't.
LOL!
I'm feeling much better now. :P
The ref's fixing a game for personal profit is not only not ludicrous, but actually something that probably has already happened. Sports betting is huge in this country, and game-fixing is something that players and coaches have all been caught doing, at the highest level. One thing game fixers hope doesn't happen, is for people to look to closely at the possibility. They hope people will think it is ludicrous.
The Steelers did have some calls go against them, but no crucial-game changing calls. Every single crucial game changing call went against Seattle. Even if you think the block in the back on Rothliesberger after his interception was missed, that would only have resulted in a change in field position. That wasn't a game changer.
Seattle had a touchdown called back on a very questionable offensive pass interference, had a drive stalled on 3rd down in Pitts territory by a bad spot and had to punt, had a completion to Pitts 1 yard line called back on a phantom holding call (Madden didn't see holding on that play because there was no holding on the play, unless you subscribe to the theory that holding could be called on every play, but Surprise! No holding calls on the Steelers, just on the Seahawks in crucial situations. On all three of Pittsburg's big plays, no holding calls, including the scramble play on 3rd and long and the reverse halfback TD pass. How many times do you see holding called on those types of plays? More often than not, I'd say. How did that 78 yard running play open up so fast, on a play designed to get 3 yards? I'm sure there was no holding on that play)
Another mystery holding call on Seattle in the 4th as they are driving into Pitts territory, called back a completion and set up the sack then interception.
Pittsburg only penalized 3 times the whole game, and Seattle the least penalized team in the NFL all season, and all of a sudden they forget how to play, racking penalty after penalty and Pittsburg turns into choirboys??
Believe what you want, I'll always look at this game as tainted.
Someone should check to see if the refs make any large bank deposits in the next few weeks.
There are usually questionable calls in every game. By sheer odds, chances are sometimes the calls will favor one team more than other. That's the law of averages. Calls don't "even out" in every game. There WERE calls that went Seattle's way, but those don't get remembered by the losing team. This is so similar to the Florida election fiasco in 2000, it's like arguing with democrats on who "really" won the election. Democrats love to point out everything that supposedly kept them from winning Florida, and thus losing the election. I'm sure we've heard the looney stories. Of course, they ignore all the GOP voters who didn't get to vote, like in the Panhandle. Now, Seahawk fans are engaged in the same selective memory. Seattle had a great year and a lot to be proud of in making the SB for the first time. Now, they're flushing it down the toilet. It's sad.
The truth is out there.
Can somebody photoshop a PeaSquawks uniform onto this guy?
This is just like the damn Democrats and the 2000 election. Who'd have thought that Seattle was this bad? Why the hell don't you all move to Canada?
Roethlisberger's TD run: A touchdown is when "any part of the ball, legally in possession of a player inbounds, breaks the plane of the opponent's goal line."
I know somebody that knows people in the NFL. He claims that there is one team that is famous for its Mafia connections. He also claims that nobody will ever do anything to clean up the game. Did you see ever dropped passes and wonder 'what the h!ll is going on?' Might it just be possible that some players just got a little richer in their Swiss bank accounts? Ca Ching, Ca Ching. That is one reason why I do not watch professional football anymore. But I love college football.
I predicted a big Pittsburgh win. Encouraged betters. I will not bet on the game. I can't stand Seattle. I have always been an AFC fan over the NFC.
My wife is a Browns/Steelers fan and from the area. She grew up with posters of Pittsburgh Steelers on her wall.
I am a fantasy football fanatic to the point that I have lost all interest in the games themselves, the teams and their records. It's all individual statistics to me, week-to-week. You can say I am a Raiders fan, because that was my team as a kid. However, I always know the calibar of every team before the season starts.
When the play-offs started I told all my co-workers that every team from the AFC has a chance to go to the SB, but only Seattle and Carolina in the NFC.
I have the NFL Direct TV package with super fan upgrade and watched football every single weekend this season and for as many years as I can remember.
I won my fantasy league this season.
I watched the game. I saw one wrong call go against Pittsburgh the whole game and it had no impact what-so-ever. I doubt you or any of the others who believe Pittsburgh won that game by out playing Seattle can name it. It's not the catch-and-fumble out-of-bounds that would have been recovered by Pitt ruled an incomplete pass either.
I thought the refs favored Pittsburgh for the entire game to the point of abject rediculuousness. They called a penalty on Hassleback that cannot even be called in the context for which it was made. I.e. the penalty aplies to hits against the non-ball handler.
I would by no means rule out fixing on the part of one or a few of the refs on that field. I've never seen it so one-sided calling as this past Superbowl. Remember, I am a Raider fan.
What angers me most about the NFL is their shielding of the referees from all media contact. Because I want to know what the line judge was thinking on Rothlesbergers TD. I watched him running in SIGNALING that the runner was down by contact and then when gets up to big Ben, his raises his arms for a TD. No other ref signalled TD. No conference, just TD. Why can't ESPN stick a mic in this ref's face and ask him what he was thinking?
Don't get me wrong. I know Cower's going for it on 4th and 1 inch because he and I both know they gained one yard on each rush for the first 3 downs. Pittsburgh is pounding it in. Getting 3 yards in 4 downs is their thing.
But by this point it had just got bizarre. You ref signasl the runner down MULTIPLE times, he ran to his side, it's his call. And then he says oh what the heck let me change my call to TD.
I know somebody that knows people in the NCAA. He claims that there is one team that is famous for its Mafia connections. He also claims that nobody will ever do anything to clean up the game. Did you see ever dropped passes and wonder 'what the h!ll is going on?' Might it just be possible that some players just got a little richer in their Swiss bank accounts? Ca Ching, Ca Ching.
The only real debate should be whether or not the consistently awful penalty-calling against Seattle was the result of bias or if it was simply amazing coincidence. The folks that think the Seahawks lost solely because of bad play either didn't watch the game or are morons (and those Steelers fans that say they wouldn't be complaining like this if the tables were turned are just dishonest).
Who cares about the evildoers, now we've got something worthy of wrath! :)
Go ahead with your XL*. NOBODY will care shortly. Even the sore losers in Seattle will get over it. People are acting like this is the worst-called game ever. Well, then these people haven't watched much football. I've seen games where there were BLATANT errors that really did cost a team a game, even a playoff game. Remember when the Giants played the 49ers a few years ago? Giants were lined up for a game-winning FG with a few seconds left. The holder dropped the ball, they didn't get the kick off, but threw the ball downfield. A Giant was open, but got TACKLED by Niner before the ball got there. CLEAR PASS INTERFERENCE, but the refs didn't call it. Game over. It would have been a Giants FD at about the 5. How come there's no * next to that game???
Your post might make sense if there had never been any gambling/game-fixing scandals ( Gee, who could possibly believe that could happen?.) Of course, there have been a lot of examples. Why would the Super Bowl be exempt? Especially when it is by far the biggest bet-upon event in all of sports. Makes sense to me that eventually some dirty refs might try to enrich themselves. Not saying it did, only that in my opinion the crucial calls were highly questionable, but it certainly is not out of the question.
LOL Please tell me you're not using Jim Rome as a source.
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