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!!!!