Super Bowl All Wrong

To the Editors:

I recognize that Colin Smith’s Feb. 8 column on the Patriots’ Super Bowl victory admitted to a certain bias, and that anyone living in New England will take sporting victories however and whenever they come, deserved or undeserved. However, how can it be that an article spanning five columns and half a page did not mention the most salient fact about that Super bowl victory, which is that the Patriots should not have been there in the first place?
The New England Patriots were squarely beaten 13-10 in the AFC Divisional playoffs by the Oakland Raiders. They were beaten when Charles Woodson forced Tom Brady to fumble on a perfectly timed corner blitz with 1:42 left on the clock and the Patriots out of time-outs. Greg Biekert fell on the ball to recover it for Oakland, and the game was over. Oakland came to New England and beat the home team in a blizzard.
Now it would have been an appropriate topic for Colin’s column to ask how one moronic evildoer of an umpire, who presumably went to the French ice skating school of judging, could overturn that fumble and call it an incomplete pass, but no, not one word on that topic. That was the worst call in two decades of football. And the fact that I’m a Raiders’ fan, and would have been in the stands cheering when Oakland beat Pittsburgh a week later is neither here nor there. There. I’m glad I got that out of the way.

–Chris Howell
Professor of Politics