Bill Leavy's admission that he made a mistake or two in Super Bowl XL has given the Seahawks fans a new lease on life.
From now on, their fans, and even their players, will have something tangible to point to whenever someone brings up the Steelers' 5th Lombardi trophy.
But this kind of whining and crying isn't exclusive to Seahawks' fans. It happens everywhere in sports and for every fan that waves their finger and screams, "We're number 1," there is a fan flipping them the bird and crying, "foul!"
That's the nature of sports fans, especially in this day and age of Internet message boards and blogs such as this one.
Case-in-point, I was doing some research online and I uncovered a site dedicated to tarnishing the Jets' miracle Super Bowl III victory over the Baltimore Colts: http://www.superbowl3.net
Check it out, it's quite the read and the author goes to great lengths to tell us that the Jets not only had no business being on the same field with the Colts, but they also had plenty of help from the officials (sound familiar?)
It doesn't matter that the Jets' triumph was arguably the most important event in the history of professional football, giving the AFL legitimacy and forever cementing the merger that has given us the most popular sport in the country. Nope, he just thinks that the Jets got lucky and the Colts should have won that day. And that was over forty years ago!
See, the 2005 Steelers aren't the only "tainted" champions. Oh no, there are plenty of them out there:
The Redskins have won three Super Bowls, but two of them followed strike-shortened seasons. Most people remember Super Bowl XVII for John (The Diesel) Riggin's 40 yard touchdown run on 4th and 1 that put the Skins' ahead for good. But there are fans of opposing teams who say that the Redskins weren't worthy to hoist the Lombardi trophy because they only played 9 regular season games that year. Clearly a tainted title.
And their second title in 1987 was won with the help of scabs; replacement players who came in during the '87 season to play three games during the strike. Another tainted trophy.
And what about another Steelers Super Bowl championship, Super Bowl XIII? If Jackie Smith didn't drop that touchdown pass late in the 3rd quarter, the game would have been tied at 21. And if Benny Barnes wasn't called for pass interference while trying to cover Lynn Swann, the Steelers wouldn't have been put in position to score their 4th touchdown. And if the umpire didn't get in the way of Charlie Waters on Franco's touchdown run, Waters would have surely stopped it and Pittsburgh would have been forced to settle for three. And if Randy White didn't have a cast on his left hand, he never would have fumbled the ball on the ensuing kickoff and Dallas would have only been down, 24-21. And the Cowboys would have then scored their two late touchdowns (apparently, they would have still gone for that onside kick despite having a 4-point lead) and won, 35-24. So, you see, clearly the Steelers 3rd trophy was also tainted.
But the Steelers have been on the other side of that coin, too. Did you know that the '76 Steelers were the greatest team in the history of the franchise? Everyone says so, and they only lost the AFC Championship game to the Raiders because of so many critical injuries. So, therefore, the Raiders Super Bowl XI win was tainted.
Back to the Steelers '76 team being the best. I've noticed a little phenomenon in Pittsburgh sports of teams losing and still being considered better than their previous championship teams. For example, the '72 Pittsburgh Pirates were considered a better team than the one that won the World Series in '71 even though that '72 team lost in the NLCS to the Reds. And the Penguins '93 team that lost in the 2nd round to the New York Islanders was a better team than their back-to-back Stanley Cup champions of '91 and '92.
Cool, that means that the Steelers have 7 Lombardi trophies, the Pirates have 6 World Series titles and the Penguins have 4 Stanley Cup victories.
Hey, wait a minute. What about Super Bowl XXX? We all know the Steelers would have won that game if Neil O'Donnell wasn't paid off by the bookies and didn't toss those two awful interceptions. I know this because my boss told me so the other day.
Therefore, the Steelers have 8 Lombardi crowns. Yes!
And they would have had 10 if it wasn't for Bill Belicheat and his tainted Patriots coming into Heinz Field and stealing two AFC titles from us.
And even before Spy-gate became public knowledge, the Patriots little dynasty was known as "The Field Goal Dynasty." Three very tainted titles.
In all seriousness, the more I think about things, the less I worry about fans calling any of our Super Bowls "tainted" because if you really sit down and dissect things, you can find reasons why a lot of teams didn't deserve titles and yours did.
It's good clean fun.
Forty years from now, I'm sure some Seahawks' fans will have Internet sites dedicated to Super Bowl XL and how the Steelers were lucky to win. But that's ok, because I'll have great stories to tell my grandchildren about how awesome it was seeing the Steelers win that "One for the Thumb!"
Oh yes, and there will be a trophy displayed at the Steelers' headquarters to prove it.
No comments:
Post a Comment