Super Bowl XLV

Ok, so age and treachery didn’t triumph although I was hoping Big Ben could pull it off in the last two minutes there. Three turnovers were just too much to overcome and Rashid’s Mendenhall’s fumble was probably the ultimate turning point.

With the final score 31-25 Packers over the Steelers, I finish up at 8-3 for the NFL play-offs this year. Hey, it could have been worse.

Speaking of things that could have been worse, SB XLV had its share.

Let’s start with the fans that thought they had tickets to the game. Apparently, Jerry “The Hitman” Jones,added some 15,000 temporary seats in his bid for a SB attendance record. Unfortunately some were apparently deemed unsafe and about 1,200 fans showed up at the game only to find they had no seats.

At first the luckless fans weren’t even allowed entry into the stadium but ultimately some 850 got seats. Another 400 were given access to a club area where they could watch on monitors or go to a standing room only section. The NFL has promised to refund three times the $800 face value of the tickets. The problem with that is some of these folks paid as much as $3,000 for the seats and then there are the travel expenses.

Next we learned that Christina Aguilera doesn’t know the words to the Star Spangled Banner. To be honest however, her mangling of the lyrics was the highlight of what I can only call a spectacularly uninspired performance. Man did she suck.

That brings us to the halftime show which had to be one of the worst I can remember. Does the phrase “cardboard cutouts yelling at you” conjure up an image? It was absolutely terrible as well as, given the probable average age of the fans in the stands, terribly age inappropriate. Holding off the second half for that garbage was downright criminal.

Luckily it was a good game and, when all is said and done, that’s what will be remembered. Ok, let’s move on to the draft.