Seattle fans slow to show Seahawks colors
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
CROSSING PUGET SOUND, Wash. -- The Puyallup slides across the sun-splashed water, bearing east toward Bainbridge Island with the snow-capped Olympic Mountains in the background framing a postcard panorama, and there's only one well-worn Seahawks piece of clothing aboard the whole ferry.
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<TD>Dan DeLong, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
With an armful of merchandise, Darlene Adams looks through a rack of NFC Championship T-shirts at the Seahawks Pro Shop at Qwest Field in Seattle.
Click photo for larger image.
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</TABLE><!--END PHOTO-->Hundreds of people and cars, and the only noticeable affectation of clothing in support of the Super Bowl-bound Seahawks adorns the head of high-school student Tim Hemphill.
"I started wearing it around midway through the season," Hemphill, 18, said yesterday while commuting home from his Seattle magnet school. "For two reasons: It was a good year, and my hair started getting long."
Welcome to the Emerald City, where for too many of a franchise's 30 years the locals paid no attention to that team behind the curtain.
Yet here are the Seahawks (16-2), heading to Detroit and Super Bowl XL to confront the Steelers (14-5). And people like Hemphill find themselves digging through closets and finding team colors from another century. "Old style," he called his wool cap in the original franchise colors of light blue and Kelly green. "Very old."
Since Seattle's NFL inaugural season in 1976, 23 different teams have reached the Super Bowl, while the Seahawks wallowed among the Browns, Cardinals, Chiefs, Colts, Jaguars, Jets, Lions and Saints -- the old guard left out.
The Seahawks got close only once, making the conference championship in 1983 when they were still members of the AFC (they moved in 2002). Then, last Sunday they walloped Carolina by 34-14 in the NFC Championship Game. That victory and the franchise's winningest season yet caught folks napping. Yes, consider it Sleeping in Seattle.
If locals aren't scouring for their old-school Seahawks gear, they've been buying out stores since Sunday.
"They've been bad for so long," Tom Gobeille, 46, tried to explain. He's a Bellevue, Wash., man and, befitting this area, the CEO of a computer networking company. He already has decided to give his 50 employees off Feb. 6, the day after the Super Bowl. He just returned home from a business-pleasure trip to Denver, where he skied Beaver Creek while wearing his son's metallic blue, slate gray and lime green jersey with the No. 96 of defensive end Grant Wistrom -- "The stuff people got when the Seahawks had hope, when the fans were going nuts [in the early- to mid-1980s], the sweatshirts have worn out, the Koozies have worn out. ..." The latter, of course, being the brand name for those can-holding coolers.
Gobeille was a season-ticket hold "for just ever," he said. "Seventeen rows up, 50-yard line. Great seats. I didn't want to go to the games, but then I couldn't give them away." So he gave them up altogether, much like folks gave up on the football club that rewarded them with just two winning seasons -- 9-7 each, at that -- and a single, one-and-done playoff appearance between 1989 and 2000.
Back-to-back NFC West titles and 10-6 records gave way to first-round playoff knockouts, so the Mike Holmgren era didn't offer much more to an already transient populace. If anything, Seattle sports fans would drift a mite, toward the NBA SuperSonics when they won a championship, in 1979, then toward the Mariners in the go-go Ken Griffey 1990s. A fancy Safeco Field further enraptured the baseball audience. Qwest Field arose next door to full, loud houses, prompting the Seahawks to retire in a Sunday pregame ceremony the No. 12 -- in honor of the 12th fan -- and fly that flag from the stadium rooftop and the city's trademark Space Needle.
Then the Seahawks went out and won on the single-biggest day in Seattle's young sports history.
Fans poured into trendy Pioneer Square. Up First Avenue, near the Lucky Lady strip club where the sign proclaimed "DePants the Panthers. . . Have an Erotic Day." McCormick & Schmick ran out of food to feed the post-victory crowds, leaving them to imbibe more.
Still, in the two days to follow, there is little outward sign that sunny, 50-plus-degree Seattle is frothing with football anticipation. There are no flags on vehicles. There are no banners hanging from storefronts or lamp posts. There are a few signs in windows, most of them hand drawn. And Seahawks paraphernalia, the new style? Hardly seen.
In a noon hour spent around Westlake Center, the monorail stop and retail middle of downtown Seattle, only one Seahawks sweatshirt was spotted among thousands of people. Why is that?
"I don't know," offered pan flutist Cesar Espinosa, a native South American wearing a CCCP Russian soccer top and finishing a rousing rendition of "Hey Jude." "I guess ... I don't know. That's weird."
In fact, there was twice as much Steelers paraphernalia: two stocking caps atop the heads of Jessi Luber and Daniela Romallo, who were set to move back today to Luber's native Ohio Valley. Luber, from Cadiz, Ohio, said of Seahawks followers, "They're not as loyal as the Steeler fans are."
Down Pine Street four blocks, at the famed Pike Place Market, only four pieces of Seahawks clothing were spotted, and half of those were worn by men behind fish counters. At City Fish Co., Arno Wespested, 29, of Bothell, Wash., in new-style Seahawks blue cap and sweatshirt atop his waders, excused the Seahawks faithful by saying, "They're still in a daze. Give them a couple days to sober up and get their gear on."
"I'm still drunk," interjected brother Leif Wespested, 26, from behind the counter.
"Hey, don't forget the Sea Trout," older-brother Arno added, pointing to his display case. There lay a trout wearing a blue mini Seahawks helmet. "He's the 12th-man trout. And the only one small enough to fit in the helmet."
A few seconds later, Arno Wespested admitted, "We're a bandwagon town."
Indeed, this is a place where the outdoor activities mostly consist of hiking, running, skiing, snowboarding, fishing, hunting, sailing, rowing, running and sipping a House Blend along a sidewalk. This is the town that brought the world the first Starbuck's -- 1971, across from the Market overlooking the Sound -- and coffee bars on almost every downtown block. This is a corner of America where eastern-outpost Washington State and the local University of Washington, nicknamed "U-Dub," were the first sports-team loves.
Super Seahawks? A pleasant diversion, like a sale at Nordy's (Nordstrom's) or rising Microsoft stock.
The Puyallup left Bainbridge Island and pushed south toward majestic Mt. Rainier -- "in all her glory," Audrey Koreman noted. The ferry made a sharp left toward Seattle and the Cascade Range to the east as Koreman and her husband, Bill, spoke from their 32-year experience of retiring to the island after living in Sikesville, Md. "It does seem strange" to have the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, Bill Koreman said, flashing a smile. "But it's a great change." Nearby, a man sat underneath a Dallas Cowboys cap.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
CROSSING PUGET SOUND, Wash. -- The Puyallup slides across the sun-splashed water, bearing east toward Bainbridge Island with the snow-capped Olympic Mountains in the background framing a postcard panorama, and there's only one well-worn Seahawks piece of clothing aboard the whole ferry.
<!--BEGIN PHOTO--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=240 align=left border=0>
<TBODY><TR>
<TD>
</TD><TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Dan DeLong, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
With an armful of merchandise, Darlene Adams looks through a rack of NFC Championship T-shirts at the Seahawks Pro Shop at Qwest Field in Seattle.
Click photo for larger image.
</TD><TD>
</TR>
</TABLE><!--END PHOTO-->Hundreds of people and cars, and the only noticeable affectation of clothing in support of the Super Bowl-bound Seahawks adorns the head of high-school student Tim Hemphill.
"I started wearing it around midway through the season," Hemphill, 18, said yesterday while commuting home from his Seattle magnet school. "For two reasons: It was a good year, and my hair started getting long."
Welcome to the Emerald City, where for too many of a franchise's 30 years the locals paid no attention to that team behind the curtain.
Yet here are the Seahawks (16-2), heading to Detroit and Super Bowl XL to confront the Steelers (14-5). And people like Hemphill find themselves digging through closets and finding team colors from another century. "Old style," he called his wool cap in the original franchise colors of light blue and Kelly green. "Very old."
Since Seattle's NFL inaugural season in 1976, 23 different teams have reached the Super Bowl, while the Seahawks wallowed among the Browns, Cardinals, Chiefs, Colts, Jaguars, Jets, Lions and Saints -- the old guard left out.
The Seahawks got close only once, making the conference championship in 1983 when they were still members of the AFC (they moved in 2002). Then, last Sunday they walloped Carolina by 34-14 in the NFC Championship Game. That victory and the franchise's winningest season yet caught folks napping. Yes, consider it Sleeping in Seattle.
If locals aren't scouring for their old-school Seahawks gear, they've been buying out stores since Sunday.
"They've been bad for so long," Tom Gobeille, 46, tried to explain. He's a Bellevue, Wash., man and, befitting this area, the CEO of a computer networking company. He already has decided to give his 50 employees off Feb. 6, the day after the Super Bowl. He just returned home from a business-pleasure trip to Denver, where he skied Beaver Creek while wearing his son's metallic blue, slate gray and lime green jersey with the No. 96 of defensive end Grant Wistrom -- "The stuff people got when the Seahawks had hope, when the fans were going nuts [in the early- to mid-1980s], the sweatshirts have worn out, the Koozies have worn out. ..." The latter, of course, being the brand name for those can-holding coolers.
Gobeille was a season-ticket hold "for just ever," he said. "Seventeen rows up, 50-yard line. Great seats. I didn't want to go to the games, but then I couldn't give them away." So he gave them up altogether, much like folks gave up on the football club that rewarded them with just two winning seasons -- 9-7 each, at that -- and a single, one-and-done playoff appearance between 1989 and 2000.
Back-to-back NFC West titles and 10-6 records gave way to first-round playoff knockouts, so the Mike Holmgren era didn't offer much more to an already transient populace. If anything, Seattle sports fans would drift a mite, toward the NBA SuperSonics when they won a championship, in 1979, then toward the Mariners in the go-go Ken Griffey 1990s. A fancy Safeco Field further enraptured the baseball audience. Qwest Field arose next door to full, loud houses, prompting the Seahawks to retire in a Sunday pregame ceremony the No. 12 -- in honor of the 12th fan -- and fly that flag from the stadium rooftop and the city's trademark Space Needle.
Then the Seahawks went out and won on the single-biggest day in Seattle's young sports history.
Fans poured into trendy Pioneer Square. Up First Avenue, near the Lucky Lady strip club where the sign proclaimed "DePants the Panthers. . . Have an Erotic Day." McCormick & Schmick ran out of food to feed the post-victory crowds, leaving them to imbibe more.
Still, in the two days to follow, there is little outward sign that sunny, 50-plus-degree Seattle is frothing with football anticipation. There are no flags on vehicles. There are no banners hanging from storefronts or lamp posts. There are a few signs in windows, most of them hand drawn. And Seahawks paraphernalia, the new style? Hardly seen.
In a noon hour spent around Westlake Center, the monorail stop and retail middle of downtown Seattle, only one Seahawks sweatshirt was spotted among thousands of people. Why is that?
"I don't know," offered pan flutist Cesar Espinosa, a native South American wearing a CCCP Russian soccer top and finishing a rousing rendition of "Hey Jude." "I guess ... I don't know. That's weird."
In fact, there was twice as much Steelers paraphernalia: two stocking caps atop the heads of Jessi Luber and Daniela Romallo, who were set to move back today to Luber's native Ohio Valley. Luber, from Cadiz, Ohio, said of Seahawks followers, "They're not as loyal as the Steeler fans are."
Down Pine Street four blocks, at the famed Pike Place Market, only four pieces of Seahawks clothing were spotted, and half of those were worn by men behind fish counters. At City Fish Co., Arno Wespested, 29, of Bothell, Wash., in new-style Seahawks blue cap and sweatshirt atop his waders, excused the Seahawks faithful by saying, "They're still in a daze. Give them a couple days to sober up and get their gear on."
"I'm still drunk," interjected brother Leif Wespested, 26, from behind the counter.
"Hey, don't forget the Sea Trout," older-brother Arno added, pointing to his display case. There lay a trout wearing a blue mini Seahawks helmet. "He's the 12th-man trout. And the only one small enough to fit in the helmet."
A few seconds later, Arno Wespested admitted, "We're a bandwagon town."
Indeed, this is a place where the outdoor activities mostly consist of hiking, running, skiing, snowboarding, fishing, hunting, sailing, rowing, running and sipping a House Blend along a sidewalk. This is the town that brought the world the first Starbuck's -- 1971, across from the Market overlooking the Sound -- and coffee bars on almost every downtown block. This is a corner of America where eastern-outpost Washington State and the local University of Washington, nicknamed "U-Dub," were the first sports-team loves.
Super Seahawks? A pleasant diversion, like a sale at Nordy's (Nordstrom's) or rising Microsoft stock.
The Puyallup left Bainbridge Island and pushed south toward majestic Mt. Rainier -- "in all her glory," Audrey Koreman noted. The ferry made a sharp left toward Seattle and the Cascade Range to the east as Koreman and her husband, Bill, spoke from their 32-year experience of retiring to the island after living in Sikesville, Md. "It does seem strange" to have the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, Bill Koreman said, flashing a smile. "But it's a great change." Nearby, a man sat underneath a Dallas Cowboys cap.
