Super Bowl XL

• 1. Introduction

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  Super Bowl XL was played on the 5th of February 2006 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan, and it delivered one of the most disputed finishes in the game's history. The Pittsburgh Steelers, the lowest seed ever to reach the Super Bowl, beat the Seattle Seahawks 21-10. That scoreline, though, would be argued over for years. A referee would later admit he had cost Seattle the game. An online poll taken two days after the final whistle found that more than 61 percent of over 103,000 respondents believed officiating mistakes had changed the outcome. What draws people to revisit this game is not just the result but the journey that got each team there, the records broken on the field, and the long shadow the officiating left behind.

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• 2. Two Unlikely Contenders

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  Pittsburgh finished the 2005 regular season at 11-5, good enough for only the sixth seed in the AFC playoffs. No sixth-seeded team had ever reached a Super Bowl in the era of the 12-team playoff format, which had been in place since 1990. The Steelers did it by beating the top three seeds on the road: the third-seeded Cincinnati Bengals, the top-seeded Indianapolis Colts, and the second-seeded Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship Game. Their playoff catchphrase was "One for the Thumb," a phrase popularized by defensive lineman Joe Greene as shorthand for a fifth Super Bowl ring.

  Seattle's path was different. The Seahawks posted the NFC's best regular season record at 13-3, anchored by running back Shaun Alexander, who led the league with 1,880 rushing yards and set an NFL record with 28 touchdowns, earning the league's Most Valuable Player award. Head coach Mike Holmgren, who had taken the Green Bay Packers to Super Bowls XXXI and XXXII, became the fifth coach ever to take two different franchises to the championship game. For the Seahawks, it was the franchise's first Super Bowl appearance in its 30-year history. The team had spent eight consecutive non-winning seasons in the 1990s and had nearly relocated to Los Angeles in 1996 before Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen purchased the club in 1997.

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• 3. Jerome Bettis Comes Home

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  Running back Jerome Bettis had spent 13 NFL seasons without ever playing in a Super Bowl. At 33 years old and in the final year of his career, he had accumulated 13,662 rushing yards and 91 touchdowns, making him the fifth all-time leading rusher in league history. Then the Super Bowl was scheduled for Detroit, his hometown. His teammates sent him out ahead of the rest of the squad during player introductions, so Bettis could walk alone onto the field in front of his hometown crowd at Ford Field.

  Bettis shaped the Steelers' championship ring itself. Owner Dan Rooney had designed a ring focused solely on this team's victory, but Bettis and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger pushed to honor all five Pittsburgh Super Bowl championships. The ring was crowned by five miniature Vince Lombardi trophies, each topped with a football-shaped diamond setting. During the pregame ceremony, Franco Harris, who had won the MVP award in Super Bowl IX on the 12th of January 1975, walked onto the field waving a Terrible Towel, a direct link back to the Steelers' first championship three decades earlier.

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• 4. Records on the Field

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  Willie Parker took a handoff two plays into the second half and ran 75 yards untouched for a touchdown, the longest run in Super Bowl history. He beat the previous record, held by Marcus Allen from Super Bowl XVIII, by exactly one yard. The score gave Pittsburgh a 14-3 lead.

  Seattle responded through a play that itself set a record. Cornerback Kelly Herndon intercepted a Ben Roethlisberger pass and returned it 76 yards, the longest non-scoring play in Super Bowl history as of 2024. The return set up a Hasselbeck touchdown pass that cut Pittsburgh's lead to 14-10.

  The play that sealed the game was equally historic. Wide receiver Antwaan Randle El, who had played quarterback in college, took a handoff on a reverse, stopped, and threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to Hines Ward. It was the first time a wide receiver had thrown a touchdown pass in a Super Bowl. Ward caught five passes for 123 yards and a score, and was named the game's Most Valuable Player. Roethlisberger, at 23 years and 11 months old, became the youngest quarterback ever to win a Super Bowl, though his own performance was historically poor for a winner: his 22.6 passer rating was the lowest ever recorded by a Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

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• 5. The Officiating Controversy

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  The disputed calls began in the first quarter, when Seattle wide receiver Darrell Jackson caught what appeared to be a touchdown pass in the end zone, only to have it called back on an offensive pass interference penalty. NFL officiating director Mike Pereira later said the call was correct. In the fourth quarter, a holding penalty against Seahawks tackle Sean Locklear wiped out a deep completion that would have given Seattle first-and-goal from the one-yard line. Pereira also defended that call as correct.

  The call that drew the most lasting argument came on an Ike Taylor interception return. Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck dove to make the tackle and was flagged for blocking below the waist, adding 15 yards to the return. Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren addressed a rally for his team the following day at Qwest Field, saying, "We knew it was going to be tough going against the Pittsburgh Steelers. I didn't know we were going to have to play the guys in the striped shirts as well."

  Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock wrote the next morning that referee Bill Leavy and his crew had ruined the game. The NFL responded two days later with a statement from spokesman Greg Aiello declaring that the game "was properly officiated." Four years later, Leavy himself told a different story. Visiting Seattle's preseason training camp on the 6th of August 2010 for a routine rules session, he volunteered without being asked: "I kicked two calls in the fourth quarter and I impacted the game, and as an official you never want to do that. It left me with a lot of sleepless nights... I'll go to my grave wishing that I'd been better." NFL Films later ranked the Super Bowl XL officiating controversy eighth on its list of the ten most controversial calls in league history.

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• 6. Detroit as Host

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  The NFL awarded Detroit the Super Bowl at an owners' meeting on the 1st of November 2000 in Atlanta, framing it as a reward for building Ford Field, a new downtown stadium. The decision had been years in the making. On the 20th of August 1996, the Lions announced plans for the new stadium, and NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue lobbied publicly for it. On the 5th of November 1996, Detroit voters approved a tax referendum to fund construction in a landslide. Groundbreaking followed three years later on the 16th of November 1999.

  Auto racing executive Roger Penske was hired to chair the host committee and ran an aggressive campaign to finalize the bid over the summer of 2000. The city faced skepticism: concerns about casino hotels, which the NFL preferred to avoid due to its stance on gambling; memories of the frigid temperatures and traffic jams that had plagued Super Bowl XVI at the Pontiac Silverdome; and Detroit's broader reputation for urban decay. Owner Jerry Jones called the final presentation at the November meeting "outstanding...one of the best presentations that I've ever seen," and Wayne Huizenga described it as a "slam dunk."

  Super Bowl XL was the second championship game held in the Detroit area, following Super Bowl XVI at the Silverdome in Pontiac. The NFL's promotional slogan for the fortieth game, "The Road to Forty," doubled as a nod to Detroit's history as the center of the American automotive industry, a connection made explicit by Penske, who ran a car dealership alongside his racing and logistics businesses.

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• 7. The Broadcast and Its Legacy

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  Super Bowl XL was the final NFL telecast on ABC before the network's sports division merged with ESPN in September 2006. Play-by-play announcer Al Michaels called his sixth Super Bowl alongside color commentator John Madden, who had been named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2006 the day before the game. Madden had already signed with NBC for the following season; days after the game, Michaels joined him there in a trade that included ESPN receiving partial rights to the Ryder Cup and Disney gaining all intellectual property rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character Walt Disney had created for Universal Pictures in the 1920s.

  The game was also a broadcast milestone: it was the first Super Bowl in which all aspects of the telecast, including commercials, were broadcast in high definition. Previous Super Bowls had carried some HD elements, but advertisements had always aired in standard definition during those games. A 30-second commercial spot was estimated at $2.6 million. Agency BBDO produced 19 commercials, the most of any single producer. The halftime show featured the Rolling Stones performing three songs: "Start Me Up," "Rough Justice," and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" before an audience of 89.9 million viewers. The Steelers' Super Bowl victory, their fifth, tied the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys for the most in league history at the time, a record Pittsburgh would break three years later.

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