[fabsroman]

Sad thing is that they took a viewer pole of the hair and 63% of the people liked Jimmy Johnson's hair.

Me, I'm a Redskins fan and quite honestly, if you told me before the game that the Redskins would be +3 in turnovers and Shaun Alexander would be out of the game early, I would have said that there is no way the Redskins would lose. Even though that was the case, the offense stunk up the joint.

What killed me even more was the calls during the games. I like Indianapolis and New England because both of the teams seem like they are down to Earth. I like the Steelers too.

In the New England game, pass interference was called against Samuel (#22) in the end zone while he was looking back for the ball and there was very little contact at all. This resulted in a Denver TD. I watched the same types of plays the next day go entirely uncalled. On the previous Denver drive, the officials called an interception as an incomplete pass because Samuel didn't get both feet down. They were wrong, but they got it right with instant replay. How about the ball that Champ Bailey fumbled on his 99 yard interception return that "might" have gone through the end zone and been New England's ball at the 20. There weren't any good camera angles to see it.

Let's get to the Pittsburgh/Indianapolis game. I couldn't help but laugh when the refs blew a play dead because everybody on both sides of the ball were moving. After a conference, they decided that there was no foul because nobody on the Pittsburgh side moved and none of the Colts made contact with a Steeler. How can that possibly be a no foul situation especially since a good amount of the Steelers moved when the Colts started jumping around and it is a foul for a defensive player to enter the neutral zone and draw an offensive player offsides. That one was really hilarious. Slow motion showed that a Steeler player did indeed move a hair, and if anything, he should have been guilty of a foul, but at the bare minimum, any call would have been better than no call.

Let's move on to Polumahlo's interception that was called an interception on the field. Essentially, he caught the ball, controlled the ball, rolled around on the ground wherein his knees touched the ground a couple of times and possibly his elbows, and in the process of coming out of the roll, his knee knocked the ball out. To me, it looked like a clear interception in regular speed and slow motion, but the referee ruled that he did not make a "football" move after controlling the ball before he knocked the ball out of his hands. This makes absolutely no sense. How does a player make a football move when he catches the ball in the end zone and barely gets his two feet or his knee in the end zone before going out of bounds? Is the going out of bounds the next football move? If I am not mistaken, there were a couple more issues with the refs and the calls in that game too.

At the end of the day, with all the money being spent on this game, and I am talking about billions of dollars, I find it utterly pathetic that the rules are too hard for the fans, the refs, the players, and the coaches to understand. I find it completely pathetic that they do not have camera angles to determine everything and that they do not have line judges every 10 yards so that they do not have to run around and possibly miss something. If anything, have 4 more refs that sit right at the pylons in the end zone. I thought justice was going to be served when Pittsburgh sacked Manning on 4th down and got the ball at the Colts 2 yard line, but Jerome Bettis, the veteran that he is, decided to hit the hole with only one hand on the ball. Hence, an almost game changing fumble that was nearly returned the entire way by Indy but for a game saving tackle by Rothlesberger. Then the Colts kicker, with the possibility of sending the game into overtimea and who is usually money, ended up hitting the ball so far to the right that I thought he was aiming for the 50 yard line. Immediately afterward, the camera focued on his eyes and they were blood shot and glazed over. Don't know if that was because he was on drugs or because he was about to start crying.

If you haven't noticed, I am pretty upset about the entire botched calls issue and I haven't even gotten to the botched call earlier in the season between the Redskins and Bucs wherein the Redskins were robbed of the game on a 2 point conversion by the Bucs that was clearly short. Alstott's elbow was clearly on the ground before the end zone as he was falling backwards, and there was no possible way that the ball could have been in front of that elbow. Coach Gibbs even wrote the league about it.

I didn't watch football anymore until the last two of the Redskins' games when it was do or die time. Now, I am disgusted with football again and will refrain from watching the Conference Championships and possibly the Superbowl. I like the Steelers and cannot stand Denver, so I might just watch the Super Bowl to cheer the Steelers on or cheer for any team playing the Broncos.

At the end of the day, a bunch of grown men getting paid millions of dollars to play a kids' sport. I wonder how much medicine we could all pay for with the money just spent on football? Yet, we cry about the medical insurance issue in this nation. Funny thing is that the soccer clubs in Europe are going broke and the European kids are more advanced than the American kids. America is starting to remind me of Rome and the Roman Empire.

Okay, I am off my soap box.