The Week That Was Super Bowl Week in the NFL

What. A. Game.

Many of my friends immediately texted me right after Kurt Warner fumbled the ball away and Ben Roethlisberger took the final knee.

They said that it was the "greatest Super Bowl ever." And if not that, "the greatest Super Bowl that I've seen" or "the greatest Super Bowl in our lifetimes."

I thought about that instantly and said it couldn't be. My friends were living in the moment. They've forgotten about David Tyree and his heroics last year. They've forgotten about "This one's for John" a decade ago. And what about Kevin Dyson's painfully vain attempt that was stopped one yard from the goal line?

I thought about those games. But after sleeping on it, my mind may have changed. So far, in my short life, and as long as I remember, this has to be one of the greatest game I've seen. This might be as good as Super XLII, better than John Elway's first Super Bowl win and maybe even better than the Rams and Titans in Super XXXIV.

And not only was the game superb, and so was NBC's telecast, scoring high reviews for it's 10.5 hours long pregame show and the production of the game. And the contrast between the Al Michaels/John Madden partnership and the other NFL broadcast crews was shown in its full light yesterday. Imagine if Joe Buck or Jim Nantz was calling the game. It wouldn't have been the same.

But it was always about the game. And it was amazing. A back-and-forth, edge-of-your-seat, how-many-cliches-can-I-use?, thrill ride that ended with one of the best touchdown catches in the history of the Super Bowl by Santonio Holmes.

The leads coming out of Pittsburgh and Phoenix's newspapers justly tell the stories of both teams.

"The ball hung in the air for what seemed like 61 years, spinning with the potential to break the Cardinals' hearts immediately and haunt their dreams forever. And that's exactly what it did." wrote Kent Somers of the Arizona Republic.

"The Steelers not only have another Super Bowl victory to celebrate, it came in what might have been the greatest of them all, and they have another play and a winning drive for the ages to go with it," is what Somers' counterpart, Ed Bouchette, wrote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

It's the best thing that any of us could have asked for, especially the way many people feel in this country right now.

It was the perfect distraction. It was the perfect game.

Extra Point:

James Harrison, the Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker who was named the Defensive Player of the Year, is a thug.

Did the officials not see Harrison throwing punches during the second half yesterday? Because if they did, he would have surely been thrown out of the game.

Or did they see those punches, and thought that the Super Bowl was too big a stage to eject anyone?

Whatever the case may be, Harrison must receive a swift and deserving punishment from the League office.

What he did was utterly unacceptable and shows that he has no class.