Great Owls, So-So Hawks

A few final thoughts about today's Super Bowl:

• I, like most people familiar with the basic concepts of football, would have just given the ball to Marshawn Lynch to gain that last yard at the end of the game.  However, I would also have taken the field goal at the end of the first half, rather than the risky play to get a touchdown.  Again, I'm sure I'm with the majority of the football-aware world on that one.  That would have left us eight points shy at the end, needing not just that easy rushing touchdown, but also a two-point conversion and luck in overtime to win.  So cut Pete Carroll a little (but only a little) slack.
• I'm genuinely surprised there wasn't a big questionable call to give Seattle an advantage at any point in the game.  A Seahawks victory would have given the NFL a get-out-of-jail-free card on the deflated football controversy. Now they'll always have it hanging over this season.
• Speaking of which, the justification and reframing of the scandal has already begun, with pundits that rely on football for a living using everybody-cheats-a-little and it-wouldn't-have-made-much-difference as their way of dismissing the problem. It's becoming another example of how we accept small-scale cheating, then act surprised when more severe cheating becomes rampant.
• I see the non-sports fans among my hipster brethren are continuing to push the joke of referring to the game as the "Superb Owl."  But even that is getting old.  Yes, that is the power of Super Bowl hype: even attempts to ridicule it get overplayed.  So I demand that by next year, you make up some backstory for the Superb Owl.  Say, that owls defend us from particularly aggressive sports fans who insist on forcing their interest on all others.  And one day a special owl - the superb owl will come to rescue those with the most complete and total disinterest in football, much as the Great Pumpkin will appear for Linus.