Tricks are better than treats and gadgets in the Super Bowl

By Sean Quinn

Trix may be for kids, but tricks are still for the NFL. Gadgets are for late-night infomercials on E-TV, The Technology Channel. So when talking to your colleagues tomorrow at the water cooler, don’t call Antwaan Randle El’s 43-yard touchdown throw to Hines Ward a gadget play, declare it a trick play.The Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers have an advanced arsenal of trick plays, usually attempting a few per game. The Seahawks were the latest victims, as Randle El’s strike to Ward put the game out of reach. The Seattle coaches and players should have seen it coming, as a throw-back from Randle El to Ben Roethlisberger, who then threw to Cedrick Wilson for an 57-yard touchdown, knocked the Cincinnati Bengals out of contention in the AFC Wildcard game nearly a month ago.

Randle El became the first receiver to throw a touchdown pass in Super Bowl history on Sunday, but I don’t think he’d like to be referred to as a electronic monkey wrench for perfecting a gadget play. He’s probably enjoy hearing the term magician being tossed around for his perfection of a trick play.

Up until recently these types of plays have always been called trick plays, why all of the sudden are the flea flickers, receiver passes and others deemed gadget plays?

John Madden seemed to be quite comfortable with the terminology during the Super Bowl, one of the few times you can actually recall such a feat. But Madden. like the rest of the football universe, never used this term in the past. There’s no need to change the term, a trick play is exactly what it sounds like. A gadget play, though, may imply the use of some foreign robotic device used to cheat the other team. Kind of like the way the Seahawks were cheated out of advertisements with the Lombardi Trophy, while a different Steeler was featured with the trophy every commercial.

Unless you are referring to Gadget, the sensuous mouse and lead character in Disney’s “Rescue Rangers,” there’s not even any use for the word in a non-nerd conversation. Gadgets are for dorks with suspenders (I’m not ripping on you guys here, but let’s not kid ourselves), not for the best athletes on the planet.

Certainly Bill Cowher didn’t coin the term, because you can’t say gadget and spit at the same time.

On the playground if you needed a big score you would always look at your most intimidating player and call a trick play. If you looked at him and then called a gadget play you’d likely get your butt kicked to the monkey bars.

Coach Mike Ditka and the 1985 Chicago Bears used one of the first trick plays in their victory in Super XX, when the 300-pound, defensive tackle William Perry busted into the end zone as a halfback. You think Perry would have ran the play had it been called a gadget play? If that were the case, “The Fridge” would have never left his couch.

If we keep referring to these plays as gadget plays, we are going to see less and less athleticism on the football field. Take Radle El, a former Heisman Trophy finalist as quarterback at Indiana University. Here is a guy who makes his living in the NFL off of trick plays. It will most likely end up giving him a healthy contract with a new team in the offseason. People want to follow in his shoes, the same shoes that Kordell Stewart took such giant steps in for the Steelers during their run to Super Bowl XXX. High school and college players, though, aren’t going to beg their coaches to let them run gadget plays, they want to execute trick plays.

It’s a sad day for the NFL, not only that Jerome Bettis is retiring (and by the way did you know he was from Detroit?), but because the long-treasured American pastime that is the trick play is now being whussed up into a gadget play. Let’s not let this grotesque term ruin one of the most exciting plays in football.

Trick plays, like the kind that gave the Steelers their fifth Super Bowl title, win championships, gadget plays lose my respect.