A Defense of the Bandwagon. What did a Seahawks fan look like before 2012? You give up? Trick

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1 A Defense of the Bandwagon What did a Seahawks fan look like before 2012? You give up? Trick question, they didn t exist. Since the Seattle Seahawks recent success, winning the Super Bowl after the 2013 season, this has become the convenient narrative describing Seahawks fans. It s pessimistic, but the Seahawks are easy to hate. Brash players and fans who act like their noise amounts to a spot on the roster make easy targets, particularly if you win a championship. It s all just bluster from fans of other teams, right? Well, maybe. Ok, maybe not. Alright, fine. There s some truth to it, but there s more to the story. Call it bandwagon, if you want, but that team, that championship, those players, mean more to Seattle than that lazy narrative suggests. The Seahawks Super Bowl win was Seattle s first major sports championship since Before that, basically nothing (a Stanley Cup in 1917 doesn t count). This is a town that has desperately wanted to be a sports town, despite the best efforts of our local teams commitment to mediocrity. The Mariners didn t post a winning season until the 1990s, and some of my fondest childhood memories are walking up Kingdome

2 concourses reeking of urine in the 80s. The town went nuts when the M s got hot in 1995, and the organization has been cashing in on that shared memory ever since. People adored the Sonics in the 90s, with legends like Gary Payton and Sean Kemp, how could we not? And now the Sonics are gone. Of course, UW remains well supported, even by locals who went to other colleges. I still can t figure that one out. Seattle has always wanted its teams to do well. Of course, everyone loves a winner. It s easy to do. People say, Where were their fans when the Seahawks sucked? One answer is at Seahawks games, because they ve always been well attended. The reputation for rowdy fans dates back to the Kingdome days, when the NFL still penalized excessive crowd noise. It s only recently that crowd noise has joined Starbucks, Grunge, and rain as things associated with Seattle by outsiders. Still, there s something about the city s embrace of all things 12 these past couple years that fuels the bandwagon accusations. Don t call it a comeback, Seahawks fans have been here for years. It s the rest of the city who just got here. Seattle went Seahawk crazy in 2013 and 2014 in a way I haven t seen since the 95 M s. Buildings throughout the city tried to outdo one another in decorating themselves in Hawk style. We even named it.

3 Hawkitecture. That s a real thing now. The local evening news on the day before the Super Bowl was exclusively about the Seahawks. I refuse to believe there wasn t a house fire in Yelm or something that could have been mentioned. It didn t matter. The city was Seahawks crazy. The city was crazy like it had never been here before, because it hadn t. Not like this. When the Sonics won a championship, the M s and Seahawks still were new franchises. It must have seemed then that things were good, getting better. Seattle sports after 1979 was a mix of encouraging progress then disappointment. This pattern would reach its zenith with the 2001 Mariners incredible record-setting 116 win season. They didn t even make the World Series. After decades of teams flirting with success, but never winning it all, Seattle had every right to feel beat down. Let s be clear, winning a championship for the love of the team is only part of the story. Much of sports media, based on the east coast (I m looking at you, ESPN), overlooks Seattle. Relegated, by the media, to an outpost in southern Alaska, Seattle fans should be forgiven for wanting some attention, recognition, and respect.

4 They got that in the biggest way sports can offer with a Super Bowl win. More people watch the Super Bowl than anything else on TV. On sports biggest stage, Seattle took its place among sports towns that matter. For the first time, Seattle sports fans had some swagger. More importantly, we got to have that swagger together, as a city. The collective joy that swept Seattle after the Super Bowl was intoxicating. By contrast, in July of 2013, Forbes named Seattle the number one most miserable sports city. We had suffered enough. That Super Bowl win ended the misery. For many fans, the misery went too long unrewarded to persevere. For those of us who never left, we ll look the other way and pretend you ve been here all along. The depth of Seattle suffering dipped so low that it s a marvel we only lost one pro franchise. That the M s and Seahawks have loyal fans at all is remarkable considering all the losing seasons in the teams first decades. These teams have only been around since the second half of the 70s. The Cubs had been losers for almost seventy years by that time, establishing itself with the Chicago community all the while. Seattle teams were too new to have deep roots, but I d say they have them now. They have roots watered with salty, salty, fan tears. We ve tasted how sweet it can be to win

5 it all, to come together as a city and celebrate something that is exclusively ours, something that can never be taken away. You can t undo that parade. The championship was a higher high than our lowest low. We ve been rewarded for our suffering. I think some fans on the bandwagon will stick around. Why not us, indeed.