Asinine intervention

Is it too much to ask, in the biggest game of the year, possibly in any sport—a game brought forth after two weeks of inane hype—for the officials to just stay out of the way and let come what may? I hope not. But I've been hoping for a long time. I take issue with at least these three calls in Super Bowl XL:

• In the first quarter, Darrell Jackson caught a touchdown pass that was nullified because of a whining defensive back on the most ticky-tack "push off" I've ever seen called offensive pass interference. It really was offensive. This turned a Seattle touchdown into a field goal.
• In the fourth quarter, a Matt Hasselbeck completion to tight end Jerramy Stevens that would have given Seattle first and goal at the one was called back because of holding against Sean Locklear. The replay showed that Locklear had only one hand on the defender, and that it was between the shoulders. Even John Madden didn't see any holding, despite the fact that, as he said, you can pretty much call holding on any play. This prevented what likely would have been another Seahawks touchdown.
• Shortly thereafter, Hasselbeck threw an interception to Steelers cornerback Ike Taylor, then was called for a personal foul on a low block at the end of the play. Except it wasn't a block, it was a tackle. Hasselbeck didn't even touch the other Steeler in question, he just took out Taylor with a blow to the legs. There's no guarantee that the Steelers wouldn't have scored a touchdown on this drive anyway, but the penalty gave them a nice 15-yard boost in the right direction.

The thing that is most infuriating about this series of completely unnecessary (the game would have been better off if the officials had been watching it from the bench!) and stupid (all three calls were indisputably terrible!) decisions is not that it took a possible Super Bowl victory out of the hands and hearts of one of the NFL's most historically impoverished franchises—though that's certainly what people in Seattle are feeling right now—, but that it took what would have been a fantastic close game and turned it into a lopsided victory. It took a game that could have been decided by its final plays, and turned it into a valiant but laughable failed attempt by the Seahawks to even make it close after the Steelers ran most of the last 6:15 off the clock by running the ball into the ground.

This kind of deplorable intervention is what makes officials more hated than cross-town rivals, as well as what makes the whole notion of fairness in sports, if not life, a farce. Couldn't we at least have sports?

Update, February 7:

Michael Smith at ESPN agrees with us, and has expressed it more completely and eloquently than we could. Even the Edell Shepherd call that got us started!