Jealousy and Dread

I have only the most casual interest in soccer, but I think I'm more into it than the average American sports fan. I watch the World Cup pretty closely, and if a Premiere League game is on, I won't change the channel. I've even been to 7-8 MLS games in Columbus, but mostly for "buck-a-brat" nights.

I was happy to see the Sounders succeed this season, but I've also had some less charitable feelings towards Seattle's MLS team. Mostly, I'm jealous of their instant rise to respectability and their status as the "cool" sports team in Seattle now. A huge number of my friends have Sounders season tickets, and some have gotten into it enough to start talking shit about the Seahawks.

Of course, that REALLY pisses me off, because it brings back the bad old days from 95-02 when Mariners fans would OPENLY piss on me for being a Seahawks fan. I remember I was out for a visit right after 9/11, and on the following Sunday, I was supposed to go to the Seahawks/Chiefs game, but it was postponed until the end of that season.

I was out at breakfast with a friend, and I was lamenting the fact that there wasn't a game that day. I understood why there was no game, but watching the Seahawks would have cheered ME up, at least. This total stranger in Mariners garb decides to chime in with "pffft. Seahawks? Who gives a crap about THEM?"

With murder in my eyes, I said "I do. And when did you get that M's gear? October of '95?"

So yeah, I'm hyper-sensitive to the Seahawks being anything but #1 on the Seattle sports landscape. I think it would be great if the Sounders won the MLS Cup, but part of me would be upset about a team winning it all in their first season, while my Seahawks are still waiting for a title after 33 years in the NFL. I just hope they don't lose to a team wearing Steelers colors (The Crew) in the MLS Cup because of awful officiating.

Back to our Seahawks: I'd love to give a pep talk, but I feel nothing but absolute dread about this game on Sunday. I'm going to go to a bar and watch, as always, but I'm not excited about it. I feel like I'm going in for a root canal or an IRS audit, not to watch my favorite team play. I'm watching more out of loyalty and obligation than because of any realistic hope the Seahawks will win the game.

...and that's the insanity of my fandom. If I was rational, I'd dump the struggling Seahawks, and pop on a Sounders FC jersey. I'm much more likely to enjoy the thrill of victory from Seattle's soccer team right now, and each Seahawks loss is like a dagger jabbing into my mind. However, if I did that, I'd feel like the biggest doucheschmuck of all time.

I'm not trying to hate on Sounders fans, particularly those of you in Seattle. It's hard to slap the "bandwagoner" label on fans of a first-year team, and that's not what I'm trying to do. But for me personally, adopting the Sounders seems oddly disloyal.

Yeah, that probably sounds crazy. Maybe I should up my meds.

Things Fall Apart; The Left Tackle Cannot Hold

Walter Jones was placed on IR today, ending his season and most likely his NFL career.

In the early days of this blog, I did a "Greatest Seahawk Ever" series, where readers could vote on a 64-player seeded bracket series of one-on-one battles to determine the best player in franchise history. Steve Largent won the popular vote over Jones in the final, but I made an impassioned argument for Big Walt:

In my opinion, the BEST PLAYER IN SEAHAWKS HISTORY is Walter Jones. The P-I had a really good piece about why Big Walt should be Canton-bound recently... Here's a taste:

Following the Seahawks' Super Bowl run in 2005, one NFC scout called Jones "not just the most dominating player at his position, but the most dominating player at any position in the NFL."

As much as we all love Steve Largent, he was never a DOMINANT player, and he was probably never the best player in the NFL at his position. Walter Jones is the indispensable man: He is the one player MOST responsible for the Seahawks golden age from 2003-2007. Without him, Matt Hasselbeck isn't an all-pro. Without him, Shaun Alexander would not have had his great run of success in Seattle. Without his off-season commitment to pushing goddamn Escalades around, he wouldn't have maintained his spectacular level of play over more than a decade.



If Walter Jones is not a first-ballot Hall of Famer, the Twelve Army should march on NFL headquarters with pitchforks and torches. When ESPN ranked the best players of the decade, Jones came in 4th behind only Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and LaDanian Tomlinson, and is widely recognized as the elite player at possibly the most valuable position on the field in the modern NFL.

I'll be there in Canton, Big Walt. I'll bring my kids, and I will tell them "There's the greatest Seahawk who ever lived."

Godspeed, Walter Jones.

7 Years Ago This Week...

Seahawks at Cowboys. Seattle came into the game 1-5, and were worse than afterthoughts at Texas Stadium on the Sunday before Halloween 2002. Sure the Cowboys were just 3-4, but Emmitt Smith was going for the all-time rushing record, and that emotional lift would surely carry Dallas to badly-needed win.

Starting QB Trent Dilfer had already gone through a rough stretch in '02. He got hurt in the preseason opener after re-signing with Seattle in the offseason (to a rapturous fan response, based on his brief stretch as the starter in 2001), and rushed back for the inaugural game at Seahawks Stadium. The Seahawks and Dilfer came out flat against their new divisional foes from Phoenix, and lost 24-13.

Trent simply wasn't right for that opening stretch of the season, and that day in Dallas the poor guy's Achilles tendon popped. In came Matt Hasselbeck, who had shown little indication that he was worth the price Holmgren paid to acquire him before the '01 season.

Smith got his record, and went onto a career of murdering the English language on ESPN and schilling for hair dye products. But the Cowboys seemed to forget that the rest of the game counted too... Plus, Seattle started playing with more fire once #8 was under center.

After a vicious, dirty hit knocked Darrell Jackson out of the game (he would go into convulsions after the game in the Seahawks locker room... scary stuff), Beck supposedly went into the huddle and barked "nobody fucking does that to us!" After a Smith TD tied the game late, Beck masturbated the ball down the feel (as Emmit Smith might say) and Rian Lindell banged through the game winning FG. It was a rapturous, unexpected win for Seattle, and the beginning of the Hasselbeck Golden Age.

For the rest of 2002, Beck was Brees-Hot, throwing for over 3000 yards in just 10 games. The Hawks went 6-4 over those games, and built momentum for the 2003 wild-card run that would follow.

Can it happen again on Sunday? Can these guys salvage the season?

Why the hell not? Go Seahawks!

Off Topic: DKSB Endorses Referendum 71

I know most of you don't come here to be exposed to my political views. In fact, I've been reprimanded by the good folks over at Field Gulls about making political references in my posts over there. Since that's someone else's house, I shall abide by that edict.

But this is my domain, and sometimes these things can't be ignored. We are football fans, but as much as we'd like to think otherwise, our sport does not exist in realm completely separate from politics. We fought a political fight to get Qwest Field built a decade or so ago, to just name one example... So we can't turn around and think there is a firewall between issues like gay rights and the team/sport we love, especially when semi-prominent NFL players are spouting homophobic language on Twitter.

As we speak, and through election day next Tuesday, Washington voters have the chance to reaffirm the already existing rights of Gay and Lesbian couples in my home state. The relevant language of R71:

Concise Description: This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.
Should this bill be:
Approved ___
Rejected ___

I would prefer the law to go farther and confer the right to marry on same-sex couples, but these legal protections alone are extremely valuable and desperately needed. It's like I've said for a while: Don't like gay marriage? Don't get one. In my eyes, until gay marriages are mandated by the state (heh... mad-date... get it?), all us breeders should probably keep our noses out of their bidness.

I could take the safe path here and just talk about how I have gay and lesbian friends, including some already in domestic partnerships, and claim that I'm just a straight honkey ally.

But that's not true. Though I am married to a wonderful woman, and I find all y'all ladies quite attractive, I'm far from the "100% straight" end of the spectrum of sexuality. I'm probably a 2 on the Kinsey Scale, and that's complicated by the fact that I've also struggled my whole life with my gender identity. Put another way: I've always wondered if I should have been a girl.

How is this relevant? What if I wanted to transition to being a woman, but that would then nullify my marriage? Or what if I had fallen in love with a man or a transgendered person instead of my wife? We wouldn't have the same legal rights as my wife and I do, and I just can't see how that is just, moral or fair.

Also, I'm not trying to start a holy war with the people of faith out there... I just don't think their interpretation of the Bible should drive public policy.

So there you go... I've laid a lot on you, and I'm sure I've lost some readers. But for those of you still left out there, I hope you'll stick around, and I hope you'll vote yes on Referendum 71.

GO SEAHAWKS!

We're in Barney

Yesterday I was all set to write an inspiring post about how the Seahawks were only one game out of first place, and how it was still anyone's division, etc. I even worked up a whole chart of the rest of the schedule showing how Seattle could steal the NFC West title...

Then the Cardinals came out of Giants Stadium with a win that made it feel like Seattle is way more than just two games out of first place. Right now no rational fan can argue that our team is as good as Arizona, and thus we are left with only one thing to fall back on: Faith.

We need faith, because there isn't much evidence to suport the idea that Seattle can win in Dallas on Sunday. Bunch of players injured? Blurg. Road game? Ugh. 10 am game? Blech. Game after the bye? Seahawks are 2-8 since 1999. Buh-arf. The main thing going in our favor is the possibility that this could be a "trap game" for the Cowboys, given that a huge showdown with Philly looms for them a week later.

The only thing that will turn this season around is an upset win on Sunday. It would be the Seahawks' biggest regular season road win since... wow... probably the division clinching win at the L.A. Coliseum in 1988? Seriously... When was the last time this team won a do-or-die game on the road where they were big underdogs? I can only really cite the win at Minnesota back in '03 from recent history.

This week the Seahawks need to defy the expectations of the media, the football world and, let's be honest, most of the Twelve Army. Win and anything is possible in a still-relevant 2009 season. Lose? Welcome to 6-10ville, my fellow Twelves.... and get used to more "Holmgren is coming back" rumors with each successive defeat.

Concerned but Powerless

The life of an NFL fan is a curious one. It's been said by writers more talented than me that being a fan is a decidedly one-sided relationship. If you think about it, all of us are kind of like creepy stalkers, only our object of obsession is an NFL team rather than another person.

We follow them around. We plaster their pictures on our walls. Our best (and worst) moments with them are lazer-etched into our memories. We write blogs about them and we swoon at the slightest acknowledgement by them that we exist. I've been obsessed with other people who had little interest in me before, and I've been obsessed with the Seahawks for over a quarter century, and I can tell you that the emotions involved are VERY similar. Just like how getting some attention from that special someone would make me giddy for days, a Seahawks win makes me a reasonable facsimile of a happy person for a few days. You can imagine how painful the opposite has always been for me.

If we weren't the paying customers who help keep the whole enterprise afloat, Matt Hasselbeck, Lofa Tatupu and the rest would get restraining orders filed against the Twelve Army. Our feelings are too intense, and frankly pretty inappropriate under ANY other circumstances.

And we're lucky. The Seahawks organization and players treat the fans VERY well compared to a lot of other NFL teams. The players and coaches give a lot of love to the 12th Man publicly, and despite the disappointing start to this season, Paul Allen generally puts a competitive team on the field that isn't replete with felons and human flotsam.

So why do the losses hurt so much worse this season? I think it's the gnawing, awful feeling that this core group that brought us so much joy and success probably isn't going to hoist that Lombardi Trophy. Anything can happen in any season, but I can't shake the idea that players like Hasselbeck and Walter Jones aren't going to be there when Seattle finally conquers the NFL. It's a terrible feeling compounded by the injustice of XL.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of you are saying "get over it" right now... even a lot of Seahawks fans. It's so difficult to explain this to anyone who isn't a long-term, die-hard Twelve. We put up with decades of being treated as the NFL's second-class citizens, and finally in 2005 everything clicked into place. Then when we could taste the validation that would then DEMAND respect for us, for our team... When we could almost grasp that Lombardi Trophy that would forever make us, if only for one year, Champions... Then it was taken away by forces out of our control.

It wasn't a Bartman or Buckner situation. It was far worse because the officiating fail was so obvious and so consistently comprehensive that practically anyone not wearing Yinzer blinders could see that we got screwed.

But even with that pain lingering, playoff trips in 2006 and 2007 made me think "redemption is near! revenge, payback and respect are nigh!" Now that idea is fading away like Marty McFly's siblings, and I'm having an awful time dealing with it in any constructive or mature way.

So we trudge on as fans, even though each loss knocks that much more life out of us. We beg for hope, even if it is a pathetic mental placebo, because we don't want to face the painful past or the uncertain future.

I don't want to say the season's over.... but I don't know how to finish that sentence.

This is where I'm supposed to go all Mitch Albom and talk about the birth of my daughter has put the NFL/Seahawks in proper perspective, blah blah blah. Unfortunately I don't feel that way this morning. Of course my daughter is way more important than any football game or football team, but the Seahawks have governed my emotional state for over a quarter century now, and even a beautiful little baby girl can't make a real dent in that.

Realistically, there is little chance that Seattle can make the playoffs. After a fairly brutal November schedule, the Seahawks will probably be 4-7, and 6-10 appears to be the most likely final record for this squad. Injuries have obviously played a part in this, but another pattern is unmistakable: Regardless of result, the Seahawks have played well one week, only to follow that with a putrid performance 7 days later. They have two blowout wins and two blowout losses, and all the evidence points to this conclusion: This is a talented team that is completely rudderless.

Jim Mora and his staff are ultimately responsible for this, and culpable for Seattle's apparent total lack of preparation yesterday. If Wisenhunt had been more aggressive in the second half, the final score would have been closer to 45-3. The Cardinal passing offense was rolling, and our offense was 1979-v-The-Rams inept.

The maddening thing? I really don't think that the 49ers or Cardinals are that much better than Seattle. Right now, on top of injuries, something is psychologically amiss with the Seahawks, and I have no idea how to fix it. If Mora, Knapp, etc want to earn their pay, they will figure it out over the next fortnight.

Want a ray of hope? The Cardinals and Niners could both easily lose to NYG/Houston next week, leaving us only one game out of first place. Last year SD won the AFC West at 8-8, and it isn't that crazy to think that could happen in our division this fall. Before anyone bitches about "not deserving" a playoff spot at 8-8, remember the Chargers felled the mighty Colts in the Wild Card game last January. I don't think any Bolts fan fails to cherish that memory, do you?

8-8 for Seattle means wins over Detroit, STL, Tampa Bay and Tennessee PLUS two more wins off this menu of games: @Dallas, @Minnesota, @AZ, SF, @HOU, @GB. No doubt: We have to start winning some games we aren't supposed to... like, now.

I'm not a pessimist. If Seattle can win at Dallas in two weeks (and these Cowboys aren't exactly of the 1992 vintage), everything will look shiny and new. But right now, I'm in what Bob Mould would call a Deep Karma Canyon, along with the rest of the Twelve Army.

Questionable

We don't know when my wife and baby daughter will be discharged from the hospital on Sunday, so I don't know if I'll get to watch the Seahawks game. Feel free to follow my thoughts, about either the game OR missing my first game since 1983, on twitter.

Go Seahawks!

Welcome the newest Keebler Twelve!

Lily Rhiannon is here! She was born at 9:34 eastern time on October 14, 2009, and both Mom and baby are doing just swell.

Hopefully the timing works out so I can see the game on Sunday, but I'm not dumb enough to mention that to my wife at the moment. :-]

Here's a pic for y'all...

DKSB Home News: New Twelve Arriving on Thursday

We just found out that my wife will have a C-section this Thursday, which means an early (and hopefully healthy) arrival for our daughter Lily.

Stay tuned here for updates, etc. I'm hoping I'll still be able to catch the game Sunday, but that's uncertain at the moment. I'll be posting here as usual until the big event on Thursday morning...

Seahawks 41, Jaguars 0

I'm a Red Sox fan. Watching them crap away game 3 this afternoon hurt, but then the Seahawks dominated and it's like I got my mind wiped spotless at Lacuna or something. In a few short hours, we saw a season get completely turned around. Instead of trudging in a mopey stupor towards "wait til next year," now the Twelve Army is emboldened, knowing that they root for a legitimate playoff contender in the Seattle F**king Seahawks.

Sure it was just one game, but it was EXACTLY the kind of win a wounded but talented Seattle team needed. Despite still being shorthanded due to injuries, a formidable arsenal of offensive and defensive weapons was displayed today by the boys in blue. We have an elite, all-pro quality quarterback who now has a El Guapo-level plethora of dangerous receivers. We have a defense that can be absolutely suffocating (at least at Qwest Field), stocked with young talent that will keep this team competitive for years to come.

I want to talk a little more about Hasselbeck. The man is the soul of this team, and he proved that again today. Playing in pain, he made the right decisions under pressure and delivered a bushel of accurate passes. His performance was among the best of his Ring of Honor-bound Seattle career, and it's safe to say we'll see a lot more of these kind of exploits as long as we can keep #8 healthy.

So we dominated a talented but underachieving Jacksonville squad, and reminded the league they best not talk trash about Qwest Field and the Twelve Army that patrols its grounds... Next week is Arizona. They know what to expect from a trip to Qwest, but that doesn't mean they can handle what is coming their way.

By this time next week, we could be back in a tie for first atop the NFC West. Part of that would be a Texans win over the suddenly vulnerable Niners Duh, that game isn't until Oct. 25- The Niners have a bye this week.... but we can't control that. We can control what we do to the Cardinals, and I foresee a long painful afternoon for Kurt Warner and his minions.

What do you think, sirs?

Triumph, Agony, or some 3rd thing...

On Sunday both my favorite teams take the field trying to stave off elimination. For the Red Sox, this is literal: lose game 3 to the Angels? Season over. For the Seahawks, it's operationally if not technically true: lose at home to Jacksonville and fall to 1-4? Season is pretty much over.

Red Sox at 12 noon eastern, Seahawks at 4:15... If you want to watch the peaks and valleys of my mental state as they manifest themselves, follow my twitter feed...

Famous Last Words

"It's really hard for me to believe that this place is going to be louder than Indianapolis' old stadium."
-Jaguars QB David Garrard

How many times have we heard things like this from players who have never played at Qwest before? And how many times do they get a brutal, ear-shattering lesson from the Twelve Army?

Have fun on Sunday, David.

Muhahahahaha!!!!!

No Choice

With the season on the line this Sunday, Coach Mora has no choice but to start Matt Hasselbeck at Quarterback. It's a gamble, but an unavoidable one.

Beck could get blasted behind a makeshift O-line and get knocked out of the game (or worse). If we were 2-2, maybe we play it safe and start Seneca again, but at 1-3 we can't afford another loss. Beck's less mobile than Wallace, but his decision-making and accuracy is far above what Seneca can provide. As long as Wallace is at quarterback, our assets at Wide Receiver can't be completely utilized either.

Then there is the matter of leadership, which the Seahawks need on the field desperately. Wallace didn't seem to provide that, but Hasselbeck has proven to be a leader of men time and time again. By playing hurt, he's once again proving his commitment to this team and to all of us in the Twelve Army.

I am an unreformed, unabashed Hasselbeck loyalist. What he has accomplished for this team warrants immediate Ring of Honor recognition once he retires, and I have always felt a special connection to him. We are the same age, and he comes across as an intelligent, funny, but "regular" guy. My adoration for him is such that I can even happily overlook his conservative politics (and that is something I can't do for most Republicans).

This might be the last game he ever starts. This might be the start of the last stretch of games he plays for Seattle. Or, hopefully, he is able to play the rest of this season injury-free, lead us to the playoffs, and then hang around to mentor whoever becomes our QB of the future.

No matter what the outcome this Sunday or for the rest of the season, I feel better with #8 out there in Seahawks blue. Godspeed, Matthew.

The Difference Between Us and Them

You can say a lot of negative things about the Seattle Seahawks right now, but the reputation of the Twelve Army remains intact. Despite Seattle going 5-15 over the last 20 games, this Sunday's game against non-rival Jacksonville is sold out, and a packed house of 67,000+ will be screaming their heads off for three hours or more.

From the very beginning, the Northwest has had a rapturous love affair with the Seahawks. Except for the 1992-2001 fallow period, the Seahawks have had no trouble filling the Kingdome or Qwest Field on a consistent basis, with the team enjoying a tremendous home-field advantage year-in and year-out.

Compare that to Jacksonville... Despite having a team that has made the playoffs 6 times in 14 seasons, they can only draw 46,000 fans to a 77,000 seat stadium. Despite racking up an all-time record of 120-108, the front office expects every home game this season to be blacked out. Despite having a dynamic star running back in Maurice Jones-Drew, nothing seems to be able to get the locals to come out to Alltel Stadium. Things are so bad there is not only talk of relocation, but chatter about drafting Tim Tebow solely as a gate draw, and moving some home games to Orlando.

Can you imagine the Seahawks needing to move home games to Portland or Vancouver, BC to sell tickets? Can you imagine the front office feeling like they had to draft a local college standout just to fend off the need to move the team? No, you can't.

I can't say I know enough about the Jacksonville area to diagnose the problems, but it's clear that the Jaguars could use a taste of what a real NFL crowd looks like. They'll get one on Sunday, that's for sure.

You don't need me to tell you this, but I will anyway. The Twelve Army needs every foot soldier at full volume this Sunday. The Seahawks may win... They may lose. But they will NOT lose because the 12th Man allowed David Garrard the easy opportunity to audible. They will NOT lose because Jacksonville was comfortable enough to never jump offsides. Throughout a fairly shitty 20-game stretch, Seahawks fans have still filled Qwest and made life very uncomfortable for the enemy. Once more, with feeling, ladies and gents... and we might just be the difference between 2-3 and 1-4. We could be the difference between more meaningful games and looking forward to 2010.

No Jaguars crowd has ever affected the outcome of a game. Not only can Seattle's fans do that on Sunday... They might just help save the season too.

The Dusty, Windblown Future

Shit sucks.

I live in my mother-in-law's basement right now, and I don't have a job. My unemployment benefits run out in December, and I'm frantically looking for a job that will start by then. On top of that, I have another child arriving in under a month (which is great, but also terrifying).

Yeah, I know it's rough all over. I'm sure there are fans of the other 31 teams that are in very similar predicaments, but I was REALLY looking forward to the Seahawks being an ESCAPE from stupid reality, not a grim punctuation to it.

So here we are, with an absolute must-win game in early October. Seahawks history would tell us that this team is kaput. We don't have a great tradition of digging out of early season holes record-wise, unfortunately. I have to admit that a plunge into the abyss of another 4-12 season is MORE likely than an NFC West title at this point.

But I'm not ready to give up yet. I'm not ready to join the legions of naysayers, haters, and bandwagon-fleeing fairweathers. Until we are mathematically eliminated, I will not give up hope. If we are, I will still bear witness and root for the Seahawks to drag the opposition down with us into the pit of hopeless despair. I am dug into my subterranean hideout deeper than a tick, and it will take a bunker-buster to get rid of my ass.

I will be here until the bitter end, because I've invested too much time and emotion in this team, and frankly I don't have anything better to do. I can only hope that this Sunday they give us some reason to believe again.

Colts 34, Seahawks 17

Me at my last semi-happy moment before the game began. All my pics from the game are here...

First of all, I don't want to hear any talk about the season being "over." If they lose next week to Jacksonville, I will concede that it's time to start thinking about 2010... But we are not there yet. There are two winnable home games coming up, then the bye. If the Hawks are 3-3 two weeks from today, Seattle still has a shot at the post-season.

With that sliver of optimism out of the way, let me say this: The Seahawks looked like the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked yesterday. Yes, Peyton Manning shreds a lot of defenses, but overall Seattle didn't look worthy of being on the same field as the Colts.

Any chatter about Seneca Wallace being the answer at quarterback should stop, because his limitations were painfully apparent on Sunday. Quarterback play is the #1 distinction between good and bad teams in the NFL, and the difference between Peyton Manning and Wallace is a yawning chasm. A healthy Hasselbeck is the only hope Seattle has of being consistently competitive in 2009.

What about my experience at the game?

I was able to get up close to the field before the game, and that was the high point of my day. A camera crew from the Seahawks got me on tape yelling and screaming, and I chatted with a few fellow Twelves. There were more Seahawks fans there than I expected, including a few sporting the new bright green jerseys (I envied these folks because my blue throwback jersey completely blended in with the Colts fans). A lot of people flew out from Seattle.. one group came out for the Huskies/Notre Dame game, and another came out for the Sounders game in Columbus. Unfortunately the Seahawks were the low point of their weekends. Sigh.

I saw Hasselbeck warming up, and I yelled at him to get well soon.. and he waved at me. Squeee!

Despite making a couple of token gestures towards their "12th Man," (a spot in their ring of honor, some banners around the stadium) Lucas Oil Stadium has a pretty tame "sit and clap" crowd. They only got even a little rowdy on Seattle 3rd downs, and even then it was a pale imitation of the atmosphere at Qwest Field. Crowd noise was not a factor at all in Seattle crappy offensive performance. The between-plays music/entertainment also seemed to be transported directly from 1987.

On the plus side, they were generally respectful and polite. The only static I got was from a couple of drunk idiots in the bathroom line who got in my face telling me how the Seahawks sucked. My brilliant retort?

"Go fuck yourself."

I couldn't really say the Colts suck, could I?

I also had more than one person ask me who "Easley" was. Nice, idiots. That'd be akin to me asking who "Dickerson" was (I was actually surprised that I didn't see any Eric Dickerson throwback jerseys, though I did see a few Unitas jerseys around).

Lucas Oil Stadium is admittedly a great facility, though I find the retractable roof a tad pointless. There's no way that arena is going to be as loud as the RCA Dome, so why not have a home field advantage based on the weather in Dec/Jan? It's also completely carpeted with advertising at a level far above what you see at Qwest Field. Meijer, hhgregg, Huntington Bank and Sprint each have whole pavilions in the stadium devoted hocking their wares. Revenue streams!!!!

The most embarrassing jerseys I saw were Rick Mirer and Jon Kitna. Really, guys? You couldn't scrape together $80 over the last decade for a new jersey, but you could afford to go to the Colts game? Actually, I retract that.. The MOST embarrassing jersey choice was the dude in the Rex Grossman Bears jersey at a Seahawks-Colts game. WTF?

After the game, I must have looked particularly forlorn, because a cute girl in Seahawks gear came up to me and said "Go Seahawks!" and then told me it would be alright.. I'm not sure if it will be, but that was nice anyway.

The Beard... Live from Indy!

I'll be tweeting from the game at Lucas Oil Stadium on Sunday... You can follow my updates here.

Seahawks!!!!

See y'all at Lucas Oil Stadium!

My good friend Woody got me a ticket to the game on Sunday as an early Xmas present. Wooooo! If you want to stop by and say hello, I'm in section 608, row 5.

Go Seahawks!!!!