I'm a Seahawks fan. I have been since day one. I was a fan even when the team sucked. There may have been fans who wanted the Seahawks to win as much as I did, but no one wanted it more.

Thirty years I waited for my team to get to the Super Bowl, and, finally, they get there! Then the refs make some bad calls, and my team loses the game.

Okay, I don't like it, but it's over.

The Seahawks had to, as did thirty other teams, wait for the next year for another chance. The Steelers are the only team that did not. Certainly the refs played a part in the game, but to attribute the loss to them deprives Steelers' fans of their just rewards. They have a class act team from the owner to the coach to the punter. In these days of fickle ownership, it was refreshing to see two owners who have remained loyal to their systems through tough times, square their teams against each other for claim as the NFL's best!

The better team, that day, won. It was not my team.

When my fellow Seahawks' fans suggest that the refs totally blew the game for us, they have to forget that the Steeler defense kept Alexander, indisputably, out of the end zone. They have to forget that a receiver is not allowed to use an extended arm to get away from a defensive back. They have to forget that a call can only be overturned when the evidence is conclusive, and that the camera does not give us a shot of the line. They have to forget that Parker broke a record run against us, that Roethelsberger was able to complete a third-and-twenty-eight to Ward on the one, and that Brown missed two field goals that changed the momentum at those points in the game.

They also have to forget that the Steelers were 15-1 the previous year, and were the hottest team going into the playoffs that year. They were legitimate champions.

The biggest error in reasoning that the calls would have made all the difference is the presumption that the game would have played the same. It wouldn't have. I guarantee you that, if Seattle had the lead by three with under a minute to go, they wouldn't have gone for a fourth-and-long deep in their own end, and Pittsburgh would not have knelt to end the game.

Pittsburgh made the most of its opportunities, and the Seahawks did not. In the end, it was an okay game, but not a great one. The Seahawks had a shot in the fourth quarter, but a win was out of reach when they didn't strike quickly on, what turned out to be, their last possession of the game.

Cowher is a solid coach who gets the most from his players. Bettis and the Steelers had a cause. Roethelsberger has the 'X factor.'

It would not have been a fluke had the Seahawks won. It was not a fluke that the Steelers did.

This Seahawks' fan's hat is off to the champion Pittsburgh Steelers! I offer good cheer for the opportunity, and not whine about blowing it!

Learn more about this author, Tom Koecke.
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