The Almost Super Bowl

One of the best football games I've seen in a long time, and certainly the best Super Bowl I've ever seen. This game had so many great plays and turning points. The fourth quarter was potentially the best 15 minutes of football ever played. Larry Fitzgerald's 65-odd yard touchdown catch was pure excitement. Santonio Holmes's game-winning touchdown catch was perfect. Everything was fantastic.

Until the last 5 seconds.

The Cardinals's last play should have been reviewed. It should have been scrutinized at least as much as any of the other plays that had been challenged during the game. Not only that, but it should have been overturned. I think it was clear to anyone that Kurt Warner's arm was moving forward just before the ball was knocked loose. I don't think the ball would have taken the trajectory it did if he hadn't been in the act of throwing it.

It was such a good game, and the Cardinals did so much to stick it to everyone who thought they were hopelessly overmatched, that they deserved one last chance to shock the world. Just think of what an incredibly epic ending we could have had if the officials hadn't given it away! Kurt Warner, the old veteran quarterback, launches a ball from close to midfield into the endzone, where Larry Fitzgerald and probably the best recieving corps in the nation have one last chance to pull down the winning touchdown against the best defense in the nation. Can you imagine that? The play would have been incredible no matter what happened. It would have firmly cemented this as the greatest Super Bowl ever. We might have talked about the Cardinals two epic comebacks, including a hail-mary to eclipse even Flutie's, for years to come. We might have talked about Larry Fitzgerald, at the beginning of the 4th quarter, declaring that he'd had enough of Pittsburgh, and that this Super Bowl now belonged to him.

Or we might have talked about Ben's near flawless winning drive with only minutes remaining. We could have talked about his evasion of one Cardinal lineman after another before delivering a perfect throw downfield for a new set of downs. We could have talked about his receivers finding every hole in the Cardinals' defense and stretching every play the extra yard. And we could have talked about Santonio Holmes's mind-blowing fade route touchdown, his tip-toes, his hands, his LeBron-esque celebration. We could have talked about James Harrison's signature, record-setting interception return. Then we would have talked about how Pittsburgh's steel curtain of a defense pulled through for them one last time, when it mattered most, with a game-ending explosion of the Cardinals' hail-mary attempt.

But instead, we will talk about how Kurt Warner's arm might have been moving forward, how the ball might have come loose before the motion began, how the officals never undertook a formal review process on the play, how the game ended before anyone really realized what had happened, how the last thing to take place on the field in Tampa Bay was a lackluster victory-formation kneel-down by Ben Roethlisberger. 

It was still an incredible game, but in the last 5 seconds, when the knockout punch for the ages should have been delivered, we instead watched 11 relieved men kneel down in front of 11 incredulous men. And the kneelers won.