Okay, that was an amazing play by James Harrison, intercepting that ball and returning it 100 yards for a touchdown and changing the situation from a probable 14-10 Arizona halftime lead (or at least a tie) to a 17-7 Steelers lead. It'll go down in history and deserves to.
However: no one but me seems to have noticed that the Steelers quite obviously committed a holding penalty during the course of Harrison's return. Watch this video, and watch number 26 for the Steelers, Deshea Townsend, and the way he "blocks" Cardinals QB Kurt Warner. It happens around the Steelers' 35 yard line with :11 seconds left. There's no embedding code on the video page I'm looking at, so just click on this URL and you'll be taken there.
Watch the play, from the bird's-eye sideline view, and then, in particular, watch the replay, from the head-on angle (with Harrison running toward the camera). From the first angle, you'll see Townsend sort of wrestle Warner to the ground. But from the head-on replay angle, you will see clearly, I believe, that Townsend grabbed a hunk of Warner's jersey and flung him to the ground by tugging the jersey earthward.
That is practically the definition of holding. Since Pittsburgh at that point had the ball, Townsend was a blocker, not a defender, and a blocker has to follow the rules of blocking. Grabbing some jersey and flinging a guy to the ground is well outside those rules. It's holding. It is SO obvious on the replay. If the penalty had been called, the touchdown would have been nullified and the half would have end 10-7 Pittsburgh.
And although this is irrelevant, Warner probably could have pushed Harrison out of bounds had he not been flagrantly held. But as I say, whether Warner could have made a play is moot under American football rules; a penalty is a penalty. Al Michaels and John Madden didn't even notice. They were swept up in the moment I guess.
I was for the Steelers. I'm glad they won. It was a thrilling game. I'm glad also that my prediction of Friday, Pittsburgh 31-28, was awfully close in spirit to what actually happened -- a relatively high-scoring game resulting in a narrow Steelers win. But this was just glaring to me and gave the whole thing a little bit of a kissing-your-sister quality, as we say over here.
Otherwise...the ads were mostly a letdown. Alec Baldwin for Hulu was awesome. The Dylan/Will.i.am ad seems to have its detractors, but as far as i'm concerned, any TV ad showcasing the musicianship of Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel et alia is by definition a great ad (it used the Planet Waves version of "Forever Young").
Springsteen was strange -- kind of hokey, I thought. "Freezeout" is a great song of course, and was a nice surprise, but his greatest songs don't really fit the format of a 12-minute gig (hence the cutting out of verses). I suppose I should disclose that I remember thinking that he'd sort of lost his chops with Darkness on the Edge of Town, and that was 31 years ago.
Yes, he's a genius and all that, and by all accounts a great fellow. Much to be admired. I'm just saying that the only Springsteen album I ever put on anymore is Wild & Innocent, and maybe once a year Greetings from Asbury Park, maybe less than that Nebraska. Therefore I would have liked to see him sing "Kitty's Back," "State Trooper," and "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd St.?," but obviously I understand why this was an impossibility.
