Cease Fire

Unfortunately, there was no episode of The War at Home last night. It was pre-empted by the Teen Choice Awards.

In retrospect, the TCA's would likely have provided a lot more entertaining blog than The War at Home, but I just didn't have it in me to watch Kevin Federline's first-ever live performance. I'm just going to assume it was... I don't know... transcendent?

I ended up watching the first half of the Seattle at Indianapolis exhibition game on NBC. I figured it would be a little more interesting than Mr. Spears considering the Steelers beat both teams in the playoffs last year and both are among the favorite teams to win the Super Bowl this season. Here were a couple funny things I noted:

Somebody at NBC has a pretty wry sense of humor. Shortly after Andrea Kremer (Mrs. Soprano) interviewed Seattle MVP Shaun Alexander, the networked segued to commercial using the intro to Alice in Chains' "No Excuses." Classic, considering Seattle has become The Excuse Capitol of the World (and ironic, considering Alice in Chains hails from said Capitol).

Six months after the fact, John Madden took an opportunity to once again claim that he didn't see the infraction on the Sean Locklear's fourth-quarter holding penalty in Super Bowl XL that may have cost Seattle a touchdown and certainly did lead to an Ike Taylor interception (effectively ending the Seahawks chances for victory).

Frankly, I was a little surprised Madden didn't take the opportunity to once again state that a certain pass 34 years ago actually bounced off of John "Frenchy" Fuqua before Franco Harris grabbed it.

The sad thing about all of this is just how much influence a dumb-ass announcer (who has publically admitted he'll never get over the Immaculate Reception) can have on nationwide perception (Please see my previous entry for some not-so-subtle views on television sports announcers).

Case in point: I was just sitting down to eat some sweet stuffed chicken and mashed potatoes at Heinz Field before the recent Steelers-Vikings exhibition game. Fate led me to a table where a guy was sitting by himself and also enjoying a pre-game meal. I said hi, and he introduced himself as Greg Bishop from The Seattle Times. We discussed football in general, how he enjoyed Pittsburgh, the fate of Seahawks-turned-Vikings Steve Hutchinson and Koren Robinson, and inevitably, what he thought of Super Bowl XL.

Interestingly enough, he had the same opinion I did. Since we were both there, actually watching the game live and without the benefit of John Madden's "expert" analysis, neither one of us gave the officiating much thought. It wasn't until later that we discovered how outraged we were supposed to be over the injustice (as perceived by John Madden and corroborated by Steve Young at halftime). I remember driving home on the Ohio Turnpike at 6:00 AM and hearing Mike and Mike in the Morning discussing how terrible the officiating was (To be fair, the smaller Mike was pointing out how many mistakes Seattle made in between each ripping of the refs).

Whether Mr. Bishop was just agreeing with me to be polite (as he's a very polite gentleman), I'll never know.

Kind of like how we'll never know if a certain pass hit Fuqua or Tatum.

Frickin' Madden.