THE GAME ITSELF: Like the

THE GAME ITSELF: Like the rest of this past NFL season, the game on the field yesterday was actually pretty darn good. Pete Rozelle, the late former commissioner of the NFL, was obsessed with parity as early as the late 1970s. The NFL efforts to level the playing field–and level dynasties such as the Packers of the 1960s and the Cowboys and Steelers of the 1970s–culminated in free agency and the salary cap, which has produced an incredibly competitive league. It’s a league where the difference between a Super Bowl champ and an also-ran is much, much smaller than it was in the ’70s and ’80s. Which is the reason why the Super Bowls of the late 1990s and the “noughts” have had far fewer blowouts than those of past.

Skip Bayless writes today that he’s “wiped out” from “just writing about the most engrossing Super Bowl I’ve covered in 29 years”.

Too bad, that as with the endless (and I do mean endless) largely leftwing sports reporters’ obsessions with Rush Limbaugh, and the Philly media trashing Brett Favre’s dad, what happened during halftime yesterday seemed to completely overshadow the game itself.