Urban Legends of the NFL: The Fixing of Super Bowl XL

The football world was in a state of chaos. The Steelers had just stolen Super Bowl XL from the Seahawks with the help of some shockingly one-sided officiating. 

Fans and sportswriters alike howled about 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’s supervisor of officiating, the one man with the knowledge and authority to assure the world that Super Bowl XL wasn’t a modern reboot of the 1919 World Series?

“The morning after the game, the 6 a.m. flight out of Detroit, I caught a plane to Costa Rica,” Pereira told me.

There’s your smoking gun, Super Bowl XL conspiracy theorists! Having schemed to hand the Steelers a 21-10 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 true.

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

He had scheduled a vacation for immediately after the NFL season. Perhaps a littletooimmediately. “I landed in Costa Rica, and the next thing I know, I am getting emails from [NFL Vice President] Greg Aiello saying, ‘Where the hell are you?'” Pereira recalled.

Explanations of the officiating during Super Bowl XL had to wait 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 coach blame the referees for the loss. Many reached a simple conclusion: The NFL wanted the Steelers to win because of the team’s huge national fanbase, or perhaps because of the power and influence of the Rooney family. So the league nudged the officials to give the Steelers an edge.

Your thoughts, Mr. Pereira?

“For anyone to suggest that there was any type of conscious moment or feeling of wanting the Steelers to win is just ludicrous. Those things just don’t happen.”

        

Smelling of Orchestration

This is an urban legend 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 so controversial 10 years ago.This NFL Top 10 segmentabout Super Bowl XL makes a handy visual aid if you want yet another look at some of the game’s most criticized plays.

The Steelers went 11-5 during the 2005 season. The Seahawks went 13-3. The Steelers overcame a three-game midseason losing streak to reach the playoffs as a wild card and beat the favored Colts and Broncos to reach the Super Bowl. The Seahawks coasted through the regular season and playoffs. Despite the records and pedigrees, the Steelers entered the game as four-point 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 XL. Detroit’s mayor declared Super Bowl Week “Jerome Bettis Week.” The state of Michigan declared the Wednesday before the game “Jerome Bettis Day.” Bettis even received the key to the city. “If it’s not all Bettis, all the time, in the days leading to Super Bowl XL, it sure seems that way,” Jarrett Bell wrote in USA Today.

Detroit is a cheap flight or a four-hour drive from Pittsburgh, and the Steelers have a massive national fanbase, so it’s 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 as Steeler Nation turned Super Bowl XL into a private party of gold 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 cool 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 90 percent. Terrible Towels waved everywhere. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended the game and made no secret of the fact that she was rooting for the Steelers. It was easy for a Seahawks fan to feel slighted, disrespected or simply forgotten as kickoff approached.

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

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

At the two-minute warning of the first 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) short of a touchdown. The side judge hesitated and then signaled a touchdown. The score was upheld during a review.

With the Steelers leading 14-10 early in the fourth quarter, a Hasselbeck completion to Jerramy Stevens at the 1-yard line was negated by a holding penalty on offensive lineman Sean Locklear. Pittsburgh linebacker Clark Haggans appeared to be offsides, forcing Locklear to reach out to protect Hasselbeck, but there was no call against Haggans to offset the fouls.

Three plays after the Locklear penalty, Ike Taylor intercepted a Hasselbeck pass. Hasselbeck was somehow flagged for a low block on the return. The extra 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 popular team that was mysteriously favored to win the game received a two-touchdown swing on iffy first-half calls and then enjoyed an additional double whammy of mysterious calls that quashed a late-game comeback by its opponent.

Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said what much of the …

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