The Super Bowl is the cherry on top of the season. Usually it is a lot like that cherry, it looks great, but when you bite into it, it isn't any damn good. And having looked at that cherry for two weeks from every conceivable angle, where it came from, how it got there, who it's parents were, what church it goes to; when you finally get to eat it there is that disheartening, 'Really? That's it?'
This was not that Super Bowl. This was everything you want out of the game. Great defensive plays, a mighty comeback, and a culminating drive in the final moments. In the end it the key wasn't a sophisticated defense or sublime offensive play that put one team over the top, it was a busted playground where kids are scrambling around trying to make something happen screaming 'I'm open'. This is the game I always picture the Chargers winning, this year it is the Steelers and good for them. A big win for a city beset with woes from a financial crisis that has rocked the economy. In a time when everyone is worried, our politics are fractious and split, the nation still sits down, almost as one, and forgets the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to watch grown men play like hell; and best of all play like kids.
So here's to the Steelers and Cardinals who played phenomenal football and for three brief hours allowed a nation come together and whoop it up.