Rob, what Mister Troutman said is right. I'm merely shedding an old technology - broadcast or cable television - in order to become a more efficient and economical consumer of entertainment. I will still watch every 49ers game, and many other NFL games, as well as a bunch of other sporting events, movies, documentaries and even sitcoms, only in future I will be accessing them as streaming content online. In a sense this is actually a measure of the level of esteem in which I hold the 49ers viewing experience, because for the last three or four years it has been the only reason I've kept my cable TV subscription active.

As to the window of opportunity to win a championship, I didn't say it was closed already, only that it might close faster than we expect unless the franchise finds a way to upgrade and reinvent and continue to outpace its rivals in terms of resilience and innovation. I agree with you that the team should be a "perennial contender" for at least the next five years or so. And I thought you already knew that anybody who posts here at Audibles is 100 percent ALL IN for each and every season's effort to win a championship, that optimism about the future is the reason we're all still gabbing away after all these years.

GT, Michael, Dave, dtw, Rob, after reading your comments about the playcalling on that final first and goal I'm beginning to get a little ticked off at the suckage of the entire event, more so than I was at the time.

Because if anyone's window of opportunity is closing fast it's Frankie G's. He has been the heart and soul of the franchise since he was drafted, he was playing lights out last night, and he should have been given at least one more chance to punch the ball into the endzone. In fact, on first down I would have called exactly the same misdirection play on which Gore scored his TD earlier. That play was run to such perfection, I see absolutely no reason not to psych the Ravens out by lining up the same way and encouraging them to conclude that the 49ers are going to run the ball to the left this time.

Oh well, water under the bridge. When you lose, especially when you lose a game of this caliber, there are a myriad different plays that can be second-guessed. I've seen more than a few comments elsewhere that "the fix" was indeed "in" in this game - classic conspiracy theory thinking perhaps, since it's always intellectually easier to assign the outcome to such a scenario than to have to digest the messy accumulation of things that actually happened - but when you see in today's headlines that more than 680 soccer matches between 2008 and 2011 were fixed by a scheme operating out of Singapore, you have to at least allow the notion that nothing is beyond the realm of the dismissable.

For me, that's not an aspect of the game or the season I wish to dwell on. Not when there is so much mental and emotional work to be done to assimilate the fact that my team has now become one of those that lose in the Super Bowl. This is an unheard of development!

I suppose it shouldn't make me think any less of the team, because I've never thought any less of Tom Brady because he's lost two Super Bowls, or of Jim Kelly because he lost three or four of them (in Kelly's case I think even more of him - damn, he was a great QB to watch!)

Last Edited By: Win80 02/04/13 04:37 PM. Edited 2 times.