No-gloat zone

No gloating here. The Cards played tough, played hard, and by all reports Kurt Warner is a decent man--even if he and Cards management are a little too ready to presume that Jesus wants their side to win.

But Big Ben and the Steel Curtain, playing backyard football (great line from Roethlisberger in the post-game: "Ben, what do you call in that last series of huddles in the final minute?" "Well, it was mostly 'Go left, go right, get open!') never, ever folded. They never panicked, they never gave up. And Mike Tomlin is the youngest coach and second African-American coach to win the Super Bowl, and he and a whole raft of his players campaigned hard for Obama.

Best play of the game? Unquestionably, and with all due credit to Ben's scrambling abilities and Lawrence Fitzgerald's freakish genetic superiority: James Harrison record-setting plus-100 yard interception and return for a TD. One of the great defensive linebackers in the game, he was hired for strength and guts, not speed, and the last time he sprinted 100 yards full-out he was probably in junior high school, but as he galloped away like a runaway freight train downfield, it was immediately apparent that it didn't matter how many Arizona offense-turned-defenders hit him and bounced off, he was not going down. It was finally left to Fitzgerald, who had also been in the Steelers end-zone when the pick went down, to run Harrison down at the Arizona line and bulldog him to the ground. Harrison flipped over and came down on the back of his head--a tumble that very well have broken the neck of someone with fewer years in the weight room. All the time they were reviewing the play, he was flat on his back in the end-zone, trainers hovering, not moving.

And then he got up and trotted back to his sideline and the hysterical accolades of his team.

Cold weather teams, baby.

Old men: