Fucking Steelers....

Fucking Steelers....

I'd prefer to meet the Jets in the Superbowl. The Steelers have a lot of big game experience to draw on, and the Pack will field a few rookies who could let the occasion get to them.

Have we got confirmation of whether the stadium roof will stay closed or be opened?

DALLAS: Six people have been hurt by ice falling from the roof of Cowboys Stadium, the venue of Sunday's Super Bowl.

The six were taken to different hospitals and the two most seriously injured were in a stable condition, said Michael Signora, the NFL's vice-president of communications in a joint statement with the Arlington Fire Department.

''Melting ice and snow on the Cowboys Stadium roof slid onto several plaza areas earlier today,'' Signora said. ''The snow on the roof is in the process of being cleared away in preparation for Sunday's Super Bowl.''

It is understood most of the injured people were stadium workers.

The region has been hammered with back-to-back storms that brought ice and bone-chilling winds on Tuesday then dumped 15 centimetres of snow overnight on Friday.

The $US1.2 billion stadium, located just outside Dallas, is where the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers will meet in the Super Bowl. Organisers are expecting to break the record crowd of 103,667 when Washington beat Miami in 1983 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California

Super Bowl week tends to be a time for hyperbolic statements, so here is another: the 45th instalment of America's grandest sporting showpiece represents no less than a battle for the nation's soul. The confrontation - between the Pittsburgh Steelers, symbols of their coal dust-clogged city's pride with six Vince Lombardi Trophies, and the Green Bay Packers, the ''Cheeseheads'' of Wisconsin once coached by Lombardi himself - is as blue-collar as you could imagine.

When these two face off at Cowboys Stadium in Dallas on Sunday night (Monday morning, Sydney time), watched by 110,000 from the stands and a billion more on television, even the cheerleaders will be gone. In keeping with their proletarian image, the Steelers and Packers are among only six sports franchises in the National Football League to do without the glamorous pompom girls.

During his decade at Green Bay, Lombardi did introduce a dance troupe but insisted that its members wore longer skirts so as not to outrage Midwestern sensibilities. Pittsburgh have remained wedded to what a spokesman described as ''old-fashioned priorities''.

This is not to suggest the Steelers lack kudos. In an unseasonably snowbound north Texas, they go in search of a seventh Super Bowl title to cement their position as the most successful team in NFL history. Their merchandise sales outstripped those of every other team this season.

Still, they are difficult for the neutral to love. Ben Roethlisberger, tipping the scales at 108 kilograms, may be an unusually fearsome quarterback but he is a dubious ambassador.

His judgment was questioned first after a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 2006, when he was found not to have been wearing a helmet, but controversy engulfed him two years later as he battled two allegations of sexual assault.

Although charges were not filed in either case, the second, brought by a 20-year-old college student, triggered a four-match suspension.

Roethlisberger could join no less exalted company than Joe Montana, Troy Aikman and Tom Brady by capturing his third ring in Dallas, but will never command the same adoration. Similarly, head coach Mike Tomlin could emulate Lombardi, whose Packers won the first two Super Bowls in 1967-68, with his second triumph - even if he trails in the popularity stakes.

Attempting to draw sentiment from Tomlin, 38, about the size of the achievement in his grasp is a painful process. ''I'm a robot,'' he said when asked how the build-up was affecting him emotionally.

''I'm just going to ride the wave.'' It is a wave the Packers could find impossible to resist.

Recording of first Super Bowl game found

6 February 2011 By David Roth and Jared Diamond

AMERICAN football fans know what happened in the first ever showdown between the NFL and AFL champions in Super Bowl I on January 15, 1967 - the Green Bay Packers stomped the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10.


But unless they were at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that day or watched the game live on NBC or CBS, fans have never actually seen the game because a tape of the historic football match was not preserved by either TV network.

All that survived of the broadcast is sideline footage shot by NFL Films and roughly 30 seconds of footage CBS included in a pre-game show for Super Bowl XXV.

Somehow, the game seen by 26.8 million people had, for all intents and purposes, vanished - that is until now, The Wall Street Journal reported.

HBO executive Rick Bernstein, who produced a two-part history of sports television in 1991, is one of many who have searched for a tape.

He says his team chased numerous leads, from a reported copy in Cuba to rumours that Hugh Hefner might have recorded the game on a videotape machine in the Playboy Mansion.

Nothing turned up. "It's the holy grail," Mr Bernstein said.

The long search may finally be over though. The Paley Center for Media in New York, which had searched for the game footage for some time, has restored what it believes to be a genuine copy of the CBS broadcast.

The 94-minute tape, which has never been shown to the public, was donated to the centre by its owner in return for having it restored.

It was originally recorded on bulky two-inch video and had been stored in an attic in Pennsylvania for nearly 38 years, the Paley Center said.

The two reels of two-inch quadruplex tape were warped and slightly beat up.

To restore the recording, the Paley Center worked with a consultant with expertise in crude tape machines used to record them and hired New Jersey-based film preservation house Specs Bros to do the work.

Ron Simon, a curator at the Paley Center, said the sequence of plays shown, the announcers and graphics that appear and the general look of the production leave no doubt that the tape is real.

"I've seen faked games before, and this is not one," he said.

The tape is not perfect though. The halftime show and a large chunk of the third quarter are missing.

The person who recorded it skipped over some breaks in the action. The image pixelates on occasion, the sound quality varies and there are occasional eruptions of white static at the side of the screen.

Regardless of the less than perfect quality, "this is one of the great finds...(it) is an amazing document," Mr Simon added.
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C'mon Packers!
Day off, hot dogs, chicken wings, potato chips & beer. Bring on the Superbowl!

Tip for the game?
First TD?
Turning point?