I have gone from feeling completely devistated and deceived/robbed to not giving a rip because we didn't play all that well in that game to begin with. Today, here's where I'm at:
First, the Seattle Seahawks did not play well in Superbowl XL. This happened because, in my opinion, Mike Holmgren did not prepare the team as he should have. I think Holmgren, at that point in his career, was starting to coast and that the professional game of football had started to pass him by. When Joey Porter came out and was a complete a**hole about Jeremy Stevens, Holmgren totally mishandled the response and it handed the Stealers the mental edge they needed on a silver platter. That wasn't all Holmgren did wrong, but it was the biggest one.
Second, while the game was not "rigged", it was CLEARLY being steered with a specific outcome in mind. That outcome? The Jerome Bettis swan song in his hometown of Detroit. This was still back when the Seahawks were viewed as a glorified CFL team by the east coast (trust me, that's where I lived when this all went down). There was ZERO push for Seattle to win that game by anyone outside of the PNW. There was just too much money to be made by the League with a Stealer victory in Jermoe Bettis' last year than the South Alaska Seahawks winning their first Championship.
Third, having said all that about the officiating and the east coast bias, I cannot say with a clear conscience that the Seahawks would have still won if the officiating were fair.
So, in conclusion, I chalk it up to the Seahawks being the new kid on the Superbowl block. Because of that, we ended up losing out on any favors by the establishment which combined with our poor play doomed us from the beginning. It sucked, but any time humans are part of the equation, there will be some sort of corruption or meddling involved. I will always hate the Stealers and their POS fans and will tell any of them they didn't earn #5 and they know it.