Glory Days In Pittsburgh

Santonio Holmes caught a Ben Roethlisberger pass in the end zone on his tippy-toes with 35 seconds left to give the Pittsburgh Steelers a 27-23 win over the Arizona Cardinals in Tampa Sunday night. It was the Steelers' sixth Super Bowl championship, more than anyone else.

The 43rd edition of the National Football League's title game, played at Raymond James Stadium, was a penalty-filled game that came dangerously close to becoming another of those one-sided affairs that permeated most of the other tilts. That was when, with Pittsburgh holding a 10-7 lead and Arizona driving toward a score, the Steelers' James Harrison intercepted a Kurt Warner pass and took it 100 yards to the other end zone for a touchdown at the end of the first half, the longest such play in Super Bowl history.

Give the Cardinals credit. Any other team that got down by 10 points in that manner at halftime would have laid down and died. But they didn't. In the second half, they scored a safety off of a Steeler holding penalty in the end zone, and Larry Fitzgerald Jr. later scored on a 64-yard run to take the lead. (Let the record show that Larry Fitzgerald Sr., who was covering the game for an African-American newspaper in Minneapolis, was not cheering in the press box. But what was that green thing hanging down from his ear?) But then Pittsburgh came back to stake its claim to a sixth Vince Lombardi trophy.

As for the other trappings we've come to expect from the Super Bowl, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band gave an energetic performance at halftime. The way Springsteen managed to get through "Born To Run", however, might have been better titled "Born To Wheeze". And sliding crotch-first into an NBC camera might not have been a Janet Jackson moment. So please, Bruce, don't do it again.

The commercials weren't the greatest this year, but they did have their moments. Budweiser featured the Clydesdales. Danica Patrick took it all off for GoDaddy.com. And Ed McMahon and '90s rap star M.C. Hammer told us how easy it was to sell their bling to an outfit called Cash4Gold.com. But there were also a number of ads with violent images and plenty of destruction. Thanks, but we don't need to be reminded that the world is going to hell.

Nevertheless, this year's Super Bowl provided plenty of excitement and entertainment to a nation struggling to pay its bills. (Did we mention that President Barack Obama was at the game?) Tomorrow, as the song goes, it's back to life. Back to reality.