Six is a sweet number

Rare is the year when what happens from kickoff until the Lombardi trophy gets carried onto the field lives up to the festivities surrounding the game. In the first half of Super Bowl XLIII, it was evident that this was going to be a game that would be remembered long after the teen extras that swarmed the field during halftime finished asking who “The Boss” is.

Blame the economy, or blame the lack of Playboy bunnies in the Tampa area this year but it seems like the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals were determined to return the most famous excuse to call in sick on a Monday back into a football game.

In 30 minutes of football, 74,000 corporate sponsors and the 1,000 fans that decided $500 per ticket was a wiser investment than stock options at the moment witnessed hard nosed football and a 100 hundred yard interception returned for a touchdown by James Harrison. They saw pageantry and performance, but they also saw 1st downs and interceptions.

A slow week led to an exciting night on the gridiron. When the media had finished telling the stories, Ben Roethlisberger would lead his Steelers to a 17-7 lead at the half, on the strength of a balanced attack that picked apart a Cardinal defense that was still stunned by the lights of the biggest game of their collective careers.

The third quarter would begin much like the second ended. After Arizona blew the chance to start the second half on a roll after deferring the kickoff, and a questionable call by the referee in which it was decided that Kurt Warner was in a throwing motion rather than running for his life and dropping the ball, Roethlisberger led his team down the field. A fourth down field goal by the Steelers would be nullified in their favor as a personal foul would put them half the distance to the goal and would lead to a wasted opportunity and a field goal to give the Steelers a 20-7 lead.

The latter half of the game would prove to be less exciting than the former, and yet it seems that the luster of the Super Bowl has been returned. It seems as if the collapse of the American economy has led to the return of the American spirit. It is a spirit with which a quarterback at the tail end of his career could take on a kid five years into a career and age does not seem to matter. It is the upstart team whom no one believed in making it to the grandest stage in the game for the first time in franchise history.

This night has shown us what can happen when the party and money take a back seat to a father and son watching the game together because the Super Bowl party of yesteryear was cancelled. In a year when the country is in a tumultuous time, we once again turn to sport to make us once again believe that we can rise up and play on the same fields as Hines Ward, and Edgerrin James.
In the end the Arizona Cardinals would be overmatched by a stronger, bigger, and faster Pittsburgh team. For the Cardinals, the sting of defeat will soon give way to the satisfaction of a sense of hope looking forward for a long struggling franchise. The men in black and gold would take the Lombardi trophy back to the steel city and with it a second championship for a quarterback in the infancy of a career that was not supposed to be enough in the NFL.

At the end of the weekend we can only say congratulations to the Steelers, better luck next time to the Cardinals, and to the return of a championship that matters, welcome back. It’s been a long time since the Super Bowl lived up to it’s name, this year we were reminded why we watch, and why we care. Sports is a way to forget the happenings of the world we live in, and tonight we watched the game we love played by the players we love to watch.

The 2008-2009 season has come to a close, the final score for the year was 27-23; the final sight of the season; a champion.