George Kimball America at LargeYou can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might just get what you need.

That having been said, we do find it interesting that the freedom-of-speech zealots most exercised over the National Football League's decision to censor Mick Jagger in mid lip-synch are in many cases the same people who are now telling Mike Holmgren to sit down and shut up.

Experience has shown that when it comes to Super Bowl controversies, those covering the game at the venue itself are often at a pronounced disadvantage.

In the third period of Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston two years ago, the scribes seated in the pressbox were startled by the distribution of a press release jointly issued by the NFL and CBS, apologising for an "incident" during the televised portion of the half-time show.

"What the bleep is this all about?" we were all wondering. Only later did word trickle in about Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction", leaving most of us who were actually at the game wondering "Breast? What breast?"

The attendant furore prompted an investigation by the Republicans who run the Federal Communications Commission and an eventual $500,000 fine, and the NFL's response was to announce its divorce from the MTV generation. Hence we got Sir Paul for last year's half-time show, and Sir Mick for this one.

It's a safe bet that years from now the two most noteworthy quotes to emerge from Super Bowl XL will be the 62-year-old Jagger (introducing Satisfaction after having had lyrics bleeped out by the network censors in each of the Stones' two previous songs, Start Me Up and Rough Justice) saying "Here's one we could have done at Super Bowl I!", and the 58-year-old Holmgren's plaintive post-game moan: "We knew it was going to be tough against the Pittsburgh Steelers. I didn't know we were going to have to play the guys in the striped shirts as well."

Mike Pereira, the NFL's supervisor of officials, had said last week that "What we want to do is to pick up the paper and read about the game, not the officiating," but there was scant chance of that happening with this football game.

It wasn't just that referee Bill Leavy and his crew made a dog's dinner of last Sunday's game, but that by and large the most execrable calls all seemed to go against Holmgren's Seattle Seahawks.

"Penalties, as much as anything, were the story of the game, and that's unfortunate," said Holmgren in what was widely viewed as sour-grapes carping. "It might be the first time I've said that in my entire life."

It was not, of course, the first time in his life he'd said such a thing. Holmgren formerly chaired the NFL's Competition Committee, a position which he apparently felt, if this past season is any indication, qualified him to snipe away at the zebras with impunity.

What is interesting about the case at hand, though, is that not even those who have castigated the Seattle coach for blaming Sunday's 21-10 defeat on Leavy and his officiating crew have claimed that he was wrong.

The two most outrageous calls resulted in the erasure of an apparent Seahawks touchdown and the awarding of a score to Pittsburgh that probably should not have counted.

In the former instance, Seattle receiver Darrell Jackson was flagged for offensive interference when he nudged Pittsburgh defender Chris Hope just before catching a touchdown pass from Matt Hasselbeck, thus nullifying the Seahawks' first score.

(There was indisputably contact, much of it mutual, and it was a nit-picking call, but the zebras were within their rights to call it.)

Then, late in the first half, Pittsburgh were awarded the go-ahead touchdown when Ben Roethlisberger went airborne and vaulted over the line, only to be met head-on by Seattle's DD Lewis, who appeared to stop him a millimetre or so shy of the goalline.

This one went to a replay review, but in the absence of incontrovertible evidence that the original call was in error, the call stood.

Those weren't the only egregious calls: what appeared to be a phantom holding call wiped out a Seattle completion that would have left the ball on the one yard-line, and, following an interception, Hasselbeck was penalised for an "illegal block" on what appeared to have been a clean tackle.

The sum effect, encouraged by Holmgren, was that the Seahawks lost because they got jobbed by the zebras, but when you come right down to it that premise is every bit as flawed as the suggestion that the Stones should have been shocked to find their lyrics relegated to the cutting room floor. It wasn't a great game, and it wasn't a great half-time show, but not for the reasons the conspiracy theorists would have you believe.

Indeed, the evidence suggests that Jagger and co went into this one with their eyes wide open. (This is, after all, a band which in its American television debut 42 years ago agreed to sing a song never heard before or since - Let's Spend Some Time Together - on the Ed Sullivan Show.)

At a press conference three days before the game Mick Jagger had acknowledged that he expected to be bleeped, but for $5 million the Stones weren't about to make a First Amendment test case out of the issue.

"Network television is always worried about how many times we say (bleep) on the air," said Sir Mick (dropping the F-bomb here).

"They were worried this morning. They thought Aretha was going to strip while doing the Star Spangled Banner."

Trust us, if you saw the 2006 version of Ms Franklin the other night, you don't even want to think about that one.