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The Untold Super Bowl Story

Before I write anything about the Super Bowl, I need to say that I was rooting ever so slightly for the Steelers to win. I had less rooting interest in this Super Bowl than I have likely ever had, though. I am not a huge fan of either team, but I don’t dislike either team either. I liked the Jerome Bettis story, and I still feel bad for Bill Cowher having lost to the hated Cowboys in the Super Bowl ten years ago.

The media surrounding professional sports in this country is pretty interesting. As is to be expected, the winners get a serious dose of praise, and the losers are heavily criticized. What I find particularly interesting is the spin taken on the performance of an individual player and how this spin differs based on whether that player’s team wins or loses.

My case in point for this year’s Super Bowl is Ben Roethlisberger. Here is Roethlisberger’s stat line: 9 completions in 21 attempts for 123 yards with 2 interceptions. He had a rating of 22.6 in the game. One of the most common candidates for worst quarterback to win a Super Bowl is Trent Dilfer for the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XXXV. Dilfer’s stat line that game: 12 completions in 25 attempts for 153 yards and 1 touchdown. He had a rating of 81.1 in the game.

With those numbers, it’s clear that if you think Trent Dilfer is the worst quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl, we have a new winner of this award: Ben Roethlisberger. And with that potentially gut-wrenching goal line interception he threw, he could easily have cemented his case in many peoples’ eyes.

Now, I understand the “worst QB to ever win a Super Bowl” is a career-type award, where you look at the whole career of a quarterback and then wonder how that guy actually won a Super Bowl. Clearly Roethlisberger isn’t like that. He was lights out in the first three rounds of the playoffs, outdueling a likely Hall of Famer (Peyton Manning) in the process. However, Roethlisberger played a below average game of quarterback in the Super Bowl, and he should feel fortunate the Steelers were able to capitalize on most of Seattle’s pretty dumb mistakes.

If Pittsburgh had lost this game, can you guess what the story line would have been? “Roethlisberger chokes in biggest game of season.” He had a bad game in the AFC Championship against the Patriots last year, and this game would have joined that one in the still very young case that Roethlisberger chokes when the stakes are highest. Now, that would be an unfair angle, because this is only Big Ben’s second season, and he is still developing as a professional quarterback, but I think that story certainly would have seen the light of day, at the very least.

Because the Steelers won the Super Bowl, we won’t be hearing anything about this, but I think it’s important for the Steelers (and Roethlisberger himself) to study hard as a result of this game and figure out what it was that kept him from performing at his usually high level. A couple of fewer Seahawks penalties and we might have a different Super Bowl champion (the Seahawks) and a new Super Bowl goat (Roethlisberger). This is a game of inches, in many more ways than one.

Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Steelers and all of their fans. What an incredible way to win the championship, coming from the AFC’s lowest seed and betting the top three teams in their own conference and the top team from the opposing conference. It is pretty clear that the Pittsburgh Steelers were the best team in football this season. A job very well done.