Of Blackouts, Bullies, and How the 9ers Became the Whiners

Joe Flacco holds the Lombardi, and a ref with lights still out in New Orleans. This blackout was inexcusable!

After Super Bowl halftime, I had just come back with my beer, plate full of brats, polish sausage, fries and hot wings to see Jacoby Jones of the Ravens race 108 yards for a runback touchdown to make the score 28-6 Baltimore. No sooner had I remarked to wifey – delirious at her team’s success: "We're about to see a blowout!" when half the lights in the Superdome went dim. At that point, the game stopped for a full 34 minutes and we both feared this unconscionable event would suck ‘mo’ - as in momentum-from the Ravens. I mean, they had the %#&*@# Niners on the ropes, down 22 points when the place went dim.
Sure enough, when play finally resumed the Ravens’ O and D looked flat, almost as if they were in a trance or spectators at a game they were supposed to be playing. (Highlighted by 2 missed tackles by the secondary letting Frank Gore in for a TD).

Meanwhile, wifey was going into a meltdown mode – tears streaming from her eyes and onto her 'Ed Reed' No. 20 jersey: “THIS IS NOT RIGHT!”  she screamed. Indeed. And both of us knew the Niners would use the unexpected free time to gather themselves and re-plan their game and regroup. Sure enough this is what occurred though many pundits said it was “just the Niners coming back again”. Bull pockey! As Tight end Dennis Pitta put it: "By the time play resumed all our energy was sucked out and we lost our momentum".


The Niner sonsabitches escaped what looked like a sure blowout. Was a Niners’ fan responsible for going into the innards of the stadium and shutting down a fuse box? Ravens’ fans are exploring that possibility while Roger Goodell and the NFL promises an investigation of the cause. Meanwhile, Entergy of Louisiana noted transmission records showing the power was never cut to the stadium. Thus, the cause had to be in the stadium itself.

New Orleanians, as typical for denizens of “the City that care forgot” just shrugged it off, but it’s not that easy. The bottom line is such travesties are not supposed to occur on the stage of the biggest sporting event on Earth, and in a putatively premier stadium in the U.S.. Rather we expect such events to hobble stadia in Santo Domingo, Port- au Prince or Kingston. It is a shameful breakdown that never ought to have transpired, and the league needs to spare no effort to uncover the source – whether human, natural or electrical fault. (This is the first Superbowl in N.O. since Katrina).


In the meantime, Forbes.com has correctly observed there should be no more SBs in the Crescent City until the 38-year old Superdome is replaced. See, e.g.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/prishe/2013/02/03/superdome-shutdown-super-bowl-xlvii-blackout-hurts-new-orleans-future-super-bowl-bids/

Fortunately, Joe Flacco and the Ravens did manage to regroup and he led a 4 minute plus drive near the end that put the game away.

The Niners did get their shots at the end – four of them into the end zone -  but couldn’t deliver. As the game ended with an intelligent ‘no call’ you could almost hear all the Niners turning into whiners. At the post-game interviews it really erupted with the likes of Ahmad Brooks and Vernon Davis implying the refs “gave the game away” and that on the best right corner end zone Kaepernick pass, to Michael Crabtree, there was defensive holding. Of course, this is horse shit and had the Refs called a penalty, as Trent Dilfer noted on ESPN, “it would have rewarded a BAD PLAY with a BAD CALL”. It would have handed a SB win to a team that didn’t deserve it, and who THEMSELVES got away with bloody murder during the game – repetitively mugging Ravens’ receivers with holds and punches (Torrey Smith being the primary "beneficiary"). Trent Dilfer also noted a vicious 49er hit on Flacco out of bounds never called. Had it been, the Ravens would have benefited from a 15-yard penalty  that could have put the Ravens further ahead in the 3rd Quarter. Did you see the Ravens pissing and moaning? NOooooooooo.....

But THIS IS HOW THE GAME WAS CALLED according to commentator Marshall Faulk. So for the refs to suddenly alter the play -calling template to benefit one team at the very end would definitely have raised eyebrows on a possible fix. 

Getting back to the Crabtree pass play, Kaepernick would have done better – instead of using a pass into the end zone that the Ravens' DBs were waiting for- to go for a read option run on the left side. There is a good chance he could have just faked a handoff to Gore, then scampered into the end zone with Ed Reed and Bernard Pollard (who we now know played with 6 broken ribs)  huffing and puffing behind him. So why didn’t Jim Harbaugh make that call instead of fruitless passes into the end zone? According to one pundit, he “overthought the strategy”. Harbaugh himself declared there was a run option on one of the plays. But it wasn't used. Why not? (And please let's not have lunk heads and paranoid delusionals saying "the last call was fixed" by the "mob" in Vegas. The infantilism of certain commentators has to stop someplace! Clue one, Sherlock, the "mob" no longer runs Vegas, it's the Corporations!)


So puh-leeze don’t blame the ‘refs for a ”bad call”, when in reality they called consistently throughout the game – ignoring obvious penalty holds, blows etc. on BOTH sides! To therefore have awarded the Niners with a special (exception)  penalty call at the very end would have been obscene as well as inconsistent. (See also : http://www.denverpost.com/renck/ci_22519807/troy-e-renck-super-time-no-call-biggest )


Thus, when assorted knotheads, punks and whiners cry that the “refs gave the game to the Ravens” they want their asses kicked, or maybe more gently – their glasses replaced! Of course, the Niners’ bullying behavior has been noted all year especially by teams they’ve played in the NFC, including my team, the Green Bay Packers. In the season opener the Niners DBs mugged Packer receivers relentlessly as they did in the playoff game, also using vicious punches (never called as penalties) to throw WRs off their timing routes. Often this whacking was done way past the 5-yard limit.

The problem for the 49ers is that in the SuperBowl, as Shannon Sharpe of CBS put it: “The Niners met Bigger Bullies than they were!” Indeed. You see the Ravens’ are built to be the biggest, toughest bunch on the block and they take no shit, especially from any Niner punks . You could see in the first half several skirmishes and punches thrown because this team is designed to BULLY, not be bullied. Their O-line alone has more ‘beef’ than five Texas Longhorns. Their defensive backs are trained to hit wide receivers so hard on receptions that on every future play they’re skittish and often drop passes. That is the way Baltimore plays and why they earned the nickname “The Baltimore Bullies” after blistering Denver a number of times over several years during the pre-Manning era. (The monicker was invented by DPost sport columnists.)


ON a final footnote, some peeved Denver fans still haven’t gotten over their playoff beating to Baltimore. Some on the Denver Post forums last night – after a story on Baltimore fans’ celebration in the streets-  asserted bollocks like “Just wait until they start burning the cars and property!” But these morons have their cities mixed up. It has actually been SAN FRANCISCO (like after their Giants’ World Series’ win) that have burned cars and rioted. See also: http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/49ers-fans-wild-ride-ends-quietly-in-SF-4247858.php  Another wrote: "If they do burn it down there's no great loss!" Well, moron, hate to break it to you, but Baltimore has more culture in one square mile than cowtown Denver has in its whole 200- odd square miles.


Maybe all losing teams and their football fans need to reclaim their lives ASAP after their team goes down, and stop making stupid excuses as well as insulting the victors!