XLIII

Obligatory Super Bowl post.

I'll keep it short, mainly because I haven't caught much of the buzz and none of the hooplah. Part of it is because our local media is in such an uproar, but also because I haven't felt much of a media through-line, a moral story that makes this game the ultimate justification of whatever needs to be justified. There doesn't even seem to be a strong us-versus-them line of that-which-makes Pittsburgh mighty versus whatever-it-is-that-makes Phoenix great.

Snow versus sun? Steelworkers versus retirees? Some great player's final hurrah? It just doesn't have the natural dualism that previous games seem to have had. There just is a shrug and a feeling that the Cardinals meeting the Steelers are like those turkeys meeting the shredder in that Sarah Palin video. And watching the commercials will have that tinge of 'So THIS is what they laid five hundred people off for'.

In Seattle, I am getting the whiff of sour grapes - heck, its a spoiled vineyard out here. We should have been at the top of our no-challenge division, but managed to lose to the Cards and destroy the whole Super Bowl as Holgren's last hurrah line that the media would have loved. And Seattle is just a tad bitter that whenever the national media talks about the Steelers, it is always in terms of "The Steelers, who have not been to a Super Bowl since they kicked the Seahawks to the curb, ate their lunch, and gave them a collective wedgie." So yeah, there's a little bitterness here.

I'm a native of the 'Burgh from before they started calling it "the 'Burgh". I'll root for the hometown team, but I haven't been there for them the most of the season. I don't know the center's name (yeah, most Steeler fans do. Most Steeler fans know the center's mother's maiden name). I fear I in this battle I am a sunshine Steeler, a summer soldier, a good-time fan, my terrible towel somewhere in with the napkins and the silverware. I expect a quiet Super Bowl, with an unexpected Steeler win.

Now watch the sports gods prove me wrong.

More later,