Unavoidable Unfairness

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Unavoidable Unfairness

                Sometimes, there’s just no way to make it right, no way to achieve fairness.  For example, take the Super Bowl played tonight.  The Ravens were up huge, 28-6, and absolutely coasting, ready to crap all over the 49ers.  But suddenly, the lights went out.  The game was delayed for 35 minutes, and America waited for these technical difficulties to be fixed, watching their beloved commercials.  When the lights finally came back on, play resumed.  However, the Ravens’ momentum was totally lost.  San Francisco came roaring back, eventually closing in on a two-point gap, 31-29.  Baltimore scored a field goal, thus raising their lead to five.  They had possession in the closing minute of the game, and on fourth down had their punter catch the ball and just run around to burn as much time as possible before allowing himself to be tackled down in the endzone for a safety with four seconds to play.

                The Ravens kicked off, and tackled the receiver, winning the game.  However, they were a whisper away from blowing their 22-point lead before the power outage.  Would the same thing have happened if the lights had never gone out?  Probably not.  Almost definitely not.  Probably, the 49ers would have done a little better for the rest of the game, but the Ravens would have still won in a quite lopsided victory.  I’m happy that the Ravens still ended up winning the game, and I will admit that I wanted them to win anyway.  But, the bigger and more important reason is because if they had lost, it probably would have been because of the power outage during the third quarter.  As unfair as that would have been, would there have been any better way to restore the exact amount of momentum and the exact conditions that were present 35 minutes before?  No, there wouldn’t have. 

                Sometimes, these kinds of situations occur.  Random things happen, and they disrupt events enough to change the outcome.  But, these situations cannot be reversed, and there is absolutely no possible way to return the situation to its former condition.  Therefore, it is very easy to argue that these types of things must be prevented as well as possible, but there is no way to prevent against everything.  What should we do when something like this happens?  There isn’t really a fair thing to do, except to just continue where the situation left off.  And that’s exactly what they did.  It could also be argued that if the Ravens couldn’t have overcome the 49ers’ comeback, then they didn’t deserve to win the Super Bowl.  Sometimes, there’s just no way to make it right.