A Great Game and a Winner in Defeat

Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Steelers for pulling out Super Bowl XLIII in a beauty of a game, 27-23. Ben Roethlisberger, your gritty game-winning drive was impressive. I hope you will keep your success in perspective in the same way Kurt Warner has, and that you'll emulate his example of a man of faith, which is something I'm glad to see you share.

Kurt Warner, surely the loss stings, but I hope that you can take some solace in what I believe was a Hall of Fame-clinching performance. Most people didn't give you much of a chance, and you came oh so close. Nobody's laughing at the Cardinals anymore.

There's something else I couldn't help but notice as I was increasingly rooting for the Cardinals to pull the game out - there were some eerie similarities with Super Bowl XLII where my beloved Giants knocked off the Patriots. Both teams had plucky underdogs (Giants and Cardinals) keep the game close against the favorites. With a few minutes left, both the Giants and Cardinals trailed by four, needing a touchdown to go ahead. Both teams got those touchdowns.

The difference was that the Cardinals' offensive explosiveness ended up leaving the door open for the Steelers. Kurt Warner's quick touchdown strike to Larry Fitzgerald left a little more than two minutes for the Steelers to come back and win. Eli Manning's touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress left Tom Brady with 35 seconds to go, and the Patriots ended up turning the ball over on downs. As a side note, my buddy and hardcore Patriots fan Dave insists that if Brady had used the middle of the field and taken the 15 to 20 yards the Giants were seemingly giving to Wes Welker and Kevin Faulk, the Patriots could have easily driven for a tying field goal. Oh well, I guess we'll never know, but it's good to use every opportunity to rehash that game.

Here's what I didn't like about Super Bowl XLIII:

1) James Harrison. You're a good player and had a great play to end the first half. But beating on and punching Aaron Francisco, a safety 40 pounds lighter than you cost your team 15 yards and pretty much swayed all the people watching who weren't Steelers or Cardinals fans to root hard for the Cards. Punk.

2) The Commercials. Very disappointing. Pepsi had a couple of decent ones, including the montage of past and present parallels as well as the Diet Pepsi commercial with men getting knocked around. I thought the best one was the Doritos "crystal ball" commercial with honorable mention to the the CareerBuilder.com "it might be time" commercial. Besides those, nothing really made me laugh out loud. And goodness, can somebody ban GoDaddy.com from churning out any more of these sexually-provacative and stupid Super Bowl commercials?