I Bet You Never Did Think That We Never Would Do It Again Ask a Pittsburgh Steelers Fan

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The football game globe was in a country of anarchy. The Steelers had only stolen Super Basin XL from the Seahawks with the assistance of some shockingly one-sided officiating.

Fans and sportswriters alike howled most phantom flags and imaginary touchdowns. Seahawks fans were livid. Steelers fans went on the defensive. Many neutral observers were left feeling a little queasy. Or suspicious.

And where was Mike Pereira, the NFL'due south supervisor of officiating, the one man with the knowledge and say-so to assure the world that Super Bowl 40 wasn't a mod reboot of the 1919 World Serial?

"The morning after the game, the six a.one thousand. flying out of Detroit, I defenseless a plane to Republic of costa rica," Pereira told me.

At that place'due south your smoking gun, Super Bowl XL conspiracy theorists! Having schemed to paw the Steelers a 21-ten victory, Pereira fled to Central America, presumably with a satchel full of Dan Rooney's money, to sip pina coladas served from the backs of tortoises far from the consequences of the greatest swindle in modern sports history.

Except that it's not truthful.

Well, except for the part about Pereira's flying to Central America hours afterwards the final gun.

He had scheduled a vacation for immediately after the NFL flavor. Perchance a piddlingtooimmediately. "I landed in Costa Rica, and the adjacent thing I know, I am getting emails from [NFL Vice President] Greg Aiello saying, 'Where the hell are you?'" Pereira recalled.

The Ford Field crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Steelers. Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

Explanations of the officiating during Super Basin Forty had to look until Pereira returned. In the meantime, Seahawks fans replayed their DVR recordings of the dubious calls over and over again in disappointment and disgust. They heard their head passenger vehicle arraign the referees for the loss. Many reached a elementary conclusion: The NFL wanted the Steelers to win because of the team's huge national fanbase, or perchance because of the ability and influence of the Rooney family unit. Then the league nudged the officials to give the Steelers an edge.

Your thoughts, Mr. Pereira?

"For anyone to suggest that at that place was whatsoever type of conscious moment or feeling of wanting the Steelers to win is only ludicrous. Those things just don't happen."

Smelling of Orchestration

This is an urban fable about whether or not Super Bowl XL was fixed. It is not about the quality of the officiating, a topic that would only reopen fresh wounds and tired debates.

That said, let's take a look back at what made Super Bowl XL and so controversial 10 years ago.This NFL Top 10 segmentnigh Super Bowl Xl makes a handy visual help if y'all desire notwithstanding another await at some of the game'southward nearly criticized plays.

The Steelers went eleven-5 during the 2005 season. The Seahawks went xiii-3. The Steelers overcame a iii-game midseason losing streak to accomplish the playoffs as a wild card and shell the favored Colts and Broncos to accomplish the Super Bowl. The Seahawks coasted through the regular season and playoffs. Despite the records and pedigrees, the Steelers entered the game as 4-bespeak favorites, according to Odds Shark.

Pittsburgh running back Jerome Bettis, a native of the host city of Detroit, became the unofficial ambassador of sorts for Super Bowl 40. Detroit's mayor declared Super Bowl Week "Jerome Bettis Week." The country of Michigan declared the Wed before the game "Jerome Bettis Day." Bettis fifty-fifty received the central to the metropolis. "If it'south not all Bettis, all the time, in the days leading to Super Bowl XL, information technology sure seems that way," Jarrett Bell wrote in Usa Today.

Jerome Bettis received the key to the urban center of Detroit days earlier his Steelers won Super Bowl Forty in controversial fashion. CARLOS OSORIO/Associated Printing/Associated Press

Detroit is a cheap flight or a 4-60 minutes drive from Pittsburgh, and the Steelers have a massive national fanbase, and so information technology'south no surprise that the Steelers were well represented in a "neutral" stadium. "There were RVs and Winnebagos with Pennsylvania license plates all over the streets of Motown equally Steeler Nation turned Super Basin Xl into a private political party of gilt and black," Dan Shaughnessy wrote in the Boston Globe.

The Seahawks, meanwhile, did not yet have marketable stars such as Russell Wilson and Richard Sherman, colorful uniforms or the cachet of absurd they now enjoy. Their best players were on the offensive line. They didn't have much "sizzle."

Broadcaster Al Michaels estimated during the telecast that the crowd at Ford Field consisted of 80 percent Steelers fans. As Shaughnessy reported, Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck placed the figure at xc percent. Terrible Towels waved everywhere. Secretarial assistant of State Condoleezza Rice attended the game and fabricated no clandestine of the fact that she was rooting for the Steelers. It was like shooting fish in a barrel for a Seahawks fan to feel slighted, disrespected or just forgotten as get-go approached.

Those feelings would soon get far worse once the action on the field began.

Darrell Jackson arguing with officials during Super Bowl XL PAUL SANCYA/Associated Printing

Late in the first quarter of a scoreless game, an apparent touchdown pass from Hasselbeck to Darrell Jackson was negated by an offensive laissez passer interference foul against Jackson. The Seahawks settled for a field goal.

At the 2-minute warning of the beginning one-half, Ben Roethlisberger attempted a quarterback sneak on 3rd-and-goal from the 1-yard line. Roethlisberger landed with his helmet in the end zone and the rest of his body (plus the football game) short of a touchdown. The side judge hesitated so signaled a touchdown. The score was upheld during a review.

With the Steelers leading fourteen-x early in the fourth quarter, a Hasselbeck completion to Jerramy Stevens at the one-one thousand line was negated by a holding penalty on offensive lineman Sean Locklear. Pittsburgh linebacker Clark Haggans appeared to be offsides, forcing Locklear to achieve out to protect Hasselbeck, but there was no call against Haggans to offset the fouls.

Three plays after the Locklear penalisation, Ike Taylor intercepted a Hasselbeck laissez passer. Hasselbeck was somehow flagged for a low block on the return. The actress 15 penalty yards gave the Steelers the ball near midfield, setting up a quick touchdown that put the game out of reach.

To summarize in conspiratorial terms: A pop team that was mysteriously favored to win the game received a ii-touchdown swing on iffy first-one-half calls then enjoyed an boosted double whammy of mysterious calls that quashed a belatedly-game comeback by its opponent.

Seahawks jitney Mike Holmgren said what much of the football globe was thinking when he addressed Seattle fans at a rally a few days afterward Super Basin Forty. "Nosotros knew it was going to be tough going against the Pittsburgh Steelers," he said. "I didn't know we were going to accept to play the guys in the striped shirts likewise."

Referee Bill Leavy, crew main for Super Basin XL, reignited the controversy when he visited Seahawks training military camp 4 years later in August 2010. "It was a tough thing for me," he said. "I kicked two calls in the 4th quarter, and I impacted the game, and every bit an official, you never desire to practise that."

Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren was upset almost the officiating in Super Bowl Forty days afterward the game. Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images

The NFL chop-chop distanced itself from Leavy's remark. "Bill's personal comments speak for themselves, and we see no reason to add to them," Aiello said.

Seattle writer John Morgan summed upwardly the feelings of the local fans in his book 100 Things Seahawks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die: "I was devastated when Seattle lost Super Bowl Twoscore, non because the Seahawks lost, but because the game felt stock-still. … It merely felt too one-sided, too partial." (Morgan clarifies in his book that he does not retrieve the game was fixed. It simply really felt that way.)

Boston writer Tom Curran provided a national perspective on Super Bowl Forty on NFL Network's NFL Top x program: "You talk about a game smelling of orchestration. That game stunk to high sky. It left you feeling dirty by the time yous turned it off."

If that's how an experienced neutral observer felt about the game, imagine what the conspiracy fringe thought.

Proving the Negative

The NFL does not set up its games. People who believe that it does are more often than not misinformed or—judging from the emails I accept received over the years—a little off-kilter.

I won't link to the typical "NFL is fixed" website. Y'all can search the net yourself if yous enjoy bold-blazon rants and weird after-the-fact explanations of how every Jaguars-Titans October game is role of a rich tapestry of cant.

It is very hard to prove, notwithstanding, that the NFL does not fix its games. That's called "proving a negative," and it'due south impossible if the folks you are trying to convince move the goal posts of "proof" fashion out of field-goal range, equally hardcore conspiracy believers e'er do. A conspiracymonger can continue claiming that the league, officials, coaches, broadcasters, quarterbacks, politicians and aliens are in on the fix no matter how much prove yous give them. Heck, information technology'southward impossible to prove that we all don't live in the Matrix and none of this is real.

1 thing we can do is talk to someone who, in the issue of an actual conspiracy to fix the near watched sporting event in America, would at least have been copied on a few memos.

"If there was a set from an officiating standpoint, who would information technology go through?" Pereira asked me rhetorically.

In Feb 2006, such a ready, if handed downwards from the league brass, would have gone through Pereira.

"That'due south right, it would become through me. Then you've come to the source. Let's put Mike Pereira on the lie detector test!"

The lie detector test is unavailable, unreliable and probably unnecessary.

"If anyone would always have come to me and said something like that who had any dominance in the league—I don't intendance if it was the commissioner—I would leave my desk immediately and walk abroad from my task. I would accept been out on Park Artery in five minutes and have never returned."

Mike Pereira was the supervisor of officiating for the NFL in 2005. Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images

Of class, that's exactly what Pereira would say if he was in on the fix up to his eyeballs.

I tin can vouch for both Pereira's honesty and his absolute dedication to the officiating craft. I could too speak to the absolute logistical unlikelihood of a systematic effort to fix a Super Bowl and the fact that NFL executives, for all of their many, many, many sins, genuinely value the integrity of the sport itself.

Just I am a media member, and anyone who knows annihilation most conspiracies knows that "the media" (we're all on one email chain) is always in on the conspiracy.

Simply Super Bowl Twoscore skeptics are non all cranks, angry Seahawks fans or snarky Urban Dictionary contributors. As Curran said, the game looked fixed. Writing for Football game Outsiders in 2006, I criticized the "admittedly, viciously terrible officiating," while Football Outsiders founder Aaron Schatz spoke to merely how suspicious the game felt. "You don't want to think almost conspiracies, but information technology just seemed like for two weeks, the league, ABC/ESPN, the city of Detroit and the NFL wanted the Seahawks to only go away and so the Steelers could take the title," he said.

We're not senseless people. So why did Super Bowl XL tempt us to believe some ridiculous things?

Myths in Football Officiating

Some of the gear up-conspiracy theories can be dismissed through sheer common sense:

• The NFL wanted the more pop team to win. Less popular teams win big games all the time. If the size of the fanbase adamant success, the Cowboys would win every other yr, and at that place would be a perennial powerhouse in Los Angeles.
• The NFL favored the Rooney family. If Deflategate has taught the states anything, it'due south that league-versus-owner politics is an ever-bubbling cauldron of unpredictable intrigue. No one gets a costless Super Bowl in exchange for "loyal service" or annihilation. And if the NFL gives prime consideration to its founding families, it is news to the Cardinals and Lions.
• The fact that the Steelers were favored is bear witness of a fix. Gamblers don't want a squad to be favored when they ready a game. Underdogs provide better moneylines and a bespeak-spread rubber net if a hypothetical fix goes south. The "house" in Vegas, meanwhile, wants even coin on both sides of a bet, which is ane reason why the Steelers were favorites in Super Basin XL: Casual bettors favored the more than recognizable squad, and so the spread helped to sweeten the deal on the other side.
• The makeup of the crowd suggests a fix. Steelers fans did non accept to suit air travel to attend the Super Bowl. Theoretically, they could get out for the game Sun morning and (very theoretically) render for work Mon morning. From a financial standpoint, a typical Steelers fan was in much ameliorate position to purchase a Super Bowl ticket than a typical Seahawks fan, who would have to volume a flight, several hotel nights, days off from work so on. Lots of casual-fan corporate VIPs also attend every Super Bowl, and such attendees would be far more than likely to root for the storied Steelers than some team that was barely getting whatsoever media attention.

The Steelers' popularity and proximity affected many elements of Super Bowl 40, from the Vegas line to the media spotlight. But could it have impacted the officiating, whether consciously or subconsciously?

Pereira still defends the piece of work of Leavy and his crew. "Was it a great officiated game? I would say 'probably not,'" he said. "Was information technology one of the worst I accept e'er seen? Certainly non. But was there a bunch of controversial calls? There were. But that game didn't accept any more mistakes than a normal football game has."

Pereira vehemently defends the Jackson pass interference call. "I was thinking to myself had they not called that, I would have given them a downgrade for non calling it," he said. Pereira thinks the Roethlisberger touchdown would accept been less controversial if officials did non hesitate before signaling the score. He said he was "OK" with Locklear'due south holding call. Only the Hasselbeck depression block was a real fault among the most controversial calls, according to Pereira; that punishment was nigh certainly one of the ii "kicked" calls Leavy later admitted to.

Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck was amidst many on the Seahawks sideline who were displeased with the officials in Super Bowl XL. Harry How/Getty Images

"I call up the chat was actually overstated after the game," Pereira concluded. "I didn't run into it as a poorly officiated game."

It's hard to argue about officiating with the earth'due south leading expert on NFL officiating. Still, I don't see a Roethlisberger touchdown or a real Jackson push button-off, fifty-fifty afterward 10 years and a skull session with Pereira. By the fourth dimension Hasselbeck was penalized for a low block, it felt to me like the referees were simply elimination the rulebook looking for ways to mess with the Seahawks, similar the kleptomaniacal sheriff giving the out-of-state commuter a ticket for poorly inflated tires and an unpolished seat chugalug.

I asked Pereira if the officials might have gotten swept upwardly in the enthusiasm of the Steelers-supporting crowd.

"1 twenty-four hours, permit's sit down down together, and you can write an article well-nigh the myths in football officiating," he replied. "The makeup call is a myth. The more popular team gets calls? Myth. Influence of the oversupply? Information technology'southward a myth. The impact that coaches have when they are getting on officials? It'south a myth!"

Pereira pointed out that all NFL officials started out on youth and high schoolhouse fields with parents screaming at them from a few feet away. They are also judged by the postgame grades their supervisors provide, the ones that decide if they ever go to officiate a Super Bowl again or cease up fired, or working Bills-Browns games in December.

Pereira eventually relented a little bit on the "home crowd" theory: "The notion of getting influenced by the crowd, if you requite that any kind of credibility at all, you give it one percent out of 100. The other 99 percent would exist getting information technology right."

That 1 pct may have loomed large during Super Basin 40. Only for me, the real fundamental to understanding why the calls from that game looked so bad lies in something else Pereira said: The makeup telephone call is a myth.

Nosotros await shaky calls to "go both ways." But NFL referees exercise not recall that mode. Hedging on one call to correct for a potential mistake in an earlier phone call will only expose them to the blind justice of the supervisor of officiating, who holds much more power over them than Mike Holmgren, Bill Cowher or even the commissioner.

Super Basin Xl saw Bill Cowher happy with the referees for once. MICHAEL CONROY/Associated Printing/Associated Printing

And then Leavy and his staff flagged Jackson on a chapter-and-verse estimation of laissez passer interference. They saw a Roethlisberger touchdown and didn't see the conclusive bear witness they needed to overturn it. They saw a Locklear concord but not an offside pass-rusher. We kept waiting for a makeup call that was never going to happen considering there is no such thing.

And private officials, with so many things to go on track of on each play, weren't noticing what the sum total of their many small decisions looked like to the viewers at home. "Even if you tried to put in a fix, things happen so fast that you don't have time to factor in things similar favoring i guy or 1 squad," Pereira said.

Over the years, the howling about Super Bowl XL has quieted. Memories fade. Wounds heal. The Seahawks trounced the ever-popular Peyton Manning to win Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014. And so they lost a second Super Bowl because of their ain late-game foolishness, which no incertitude shook some holdout conspiracy theorists back to their senses.

Simply put, besides many weird things tin happen in a football game to orchestrate a league-level fix.

Of grade, that may be just what the puppet masters want us to believe.

The debacle surrounding the officiating in Super Basin XL did spark one pregnant rule modify. Pereira said that high-ranking NFL employees are no longer immune to schedule vacations for the day afterwards the Super Basin. And so if wonky officiating, soft footballs or any other scandal clouds any time to come Super Basin, summit execs won't hands flee to Central America.

But let's hope it never comes to that. No one outside of western Pennsylvania e'er wants to see a game officiated quite as unsatisfactorily as Super Basin XL again.

Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Written report. Follow him on Twitter @MikeTanier.

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Source: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2652571-urban-legends-of-the-nfl-the-fixing-of-super-bowl-xl