Time to stop being clueless about Seattle
BY STEVE KELLEY
Seattle Times
DETROIT - Thank God it's game day.
Finally it's time for Pittsburgh linebacker Joey Porter to walk the talk.
It's time for Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck to show the billion or so people watching just how good he is.
No more questions about how the Seahawks will handle the Steelers' 3-4 defense. No more tortured interrogations of Seattle tight end Jerramy Stevens.
Super Bowl Sunday brings a respite from the thousands of agonized Aggies who just can't believe that another team could be brazen enough to believe the idea of the 12th man doesn't belong only to Texas A&M.
The next thing you know A&M will file half a lawsuit against the NBA when the league announces its annual Sixth Man Award.
TGIGD.
At last we don't have to read any more stories, hear any more questions about how remote Seattle is. No more analysts claiming nobody knows about the Seahawks because they play in far-away Seattle.
The fractured way geographically challenged football scribes wrote about the Seahawks last week, you'd think the only guys who've ever covered the team are Lewis and Clark.
Listen to the pundits on cable TV, and you'd think they were the Siberia Seahawks. You'd think the city was discovered by Neil Armstrong. You'd think the only flights to Seattle originated out of Cape Canaveral.
TGIGD.
You listen to people who should know better talk about the Seahawks, and you'd think this Super Bowl appearance was the first and only accomplishment in Seattle sports history.
They forget that five years ago the Mariners won 116 games. (Come to think of it, that's hard for a lot of us to remember.) Former Mariner Randy Johnson won a Cy Young Award in Seattle. And Ken Griffey Jr. had no problem building his reputation in the same far-off city.
Just because the 21st-century Sonics can't seem to get it right, and want us to build them a new arena before they build Seattle a team worthy of a new place, doesn't mean the city doesn't have a rich basketball history.
Seattle won an NBA championship in 1979. It remains the home of Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens. It has been home to Fred Brown, Gus Williams, Dennis Johnson, Jack Sikma, Lonnie Shelton and Paul Silas.
Tom Chambers won the MVP in the NBA All-Star Game, as a Sonic, in Seattle. The city gave NBA birth to Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton, to Slick Watts and Spencer Haywood. It hosted the NBA Finals in 1996 and there wasn't a hotter, louder, more intimate building in basketball than KeyArena.
The Washington men's basketball team was a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament last March. Across the state, Gonzaga remains a national power. Anybody ever heard of Adam Morrison?
Enough people noticed Seahawks wide receiver Steve Largent and Huskies and Seahawks quarterback Warren Moon to vote them into the Hall of Fame. The summer before last the Seattle Storm won the WNBA championship. And, once upon a time, Washington was a football power that frequented the Rose Bowl and the Top 10.
TGIGD.
You just get a little tired of people referring to Seattle as some backwater when you know it's the home of the Seattle Opera's world-renowned Ring Cycle. When you see its local theater companies winning Tony Awards. When its Pacific Northwest Ballet continues to challenge itself, combining innovative works with the classics.
Isn't it funny that Seattle Symphony maestro Gerard Schwarz has been able to survive the terrible "isolation" of Seattle and has created an international reputation.
Jonathan Raben, Charles Johnson, Sherman Alexie and David Shields are among the many great writers living in or near the city. And the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson lived and worked in Seattle.
The city is the home of Pearl Jam, which after all these years remains one of the world's hottest bands. And just for the musically impaired who continue to refer to the Seattle music scene as grunge, the expiration date on that term was, oh, about 1995.
TGIGD.
Didn't Microsoft start shrinking the world three decades ago? Isn't Microsoft based in the Greater Seattle area? Aren't the co-founders of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, from Seattle?
Thanks in large part to Microsoft, we live in the wired age. I can have e-mail arguments over sports with soldiers in Mosul. I can file columns from the top of Kilimanjaro. So you mean to tell me people still think Seattle is isolated, somewhere between the Yukon and Uranus?
The point of this rant is that the Seahawks' anonymity has nothing to do with geography. The Seahawks' games are televised. The highlights of their games are shown on every cable outlet every Sunday, just like the Giants' games and the Patriots' games. You can follow them on your computer, your cellphone, you name it.
People weren't paying attention to the Seahawks because, for 20 years, they didn't win. Want to isolate yourself from the world? Just lose, baby.
And it seems every time the Hawks played a potential breakthrough game, they broke down. They lost in overtime in the playoffs in Green Bay. They lost in the last seconds in the playoffs to St. Louis at home.
But the only real similarities between these Seahawks and all of those other Seahawks are the name and the logo. This team wins. And the world pays attention when you win.
It's 2006. Lewis and Clark aren't in the house, and the only geography that matters on this day is that Seattle is this close to its first Super Bowl title.
Thank God it's Game Day.
BY STEVE KELLEY
Seattle Times
DETROIT - Thank God it's game day.
Finally it's time for Pittsburgh linebacker Joey Porter to walk the talk.
It's time for Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck to show the billion or so people watching just how good he is.
No more questions about how the Seahawks will handle the Steelers' 3-4 defense. No more tortured interrogations of Seattle tight end Jerramy Stevens.
Super Bowl Sunday brings a respite from the thousands of agonized Aggies who just can't believe that another team could be brazen enough to believe the idea of the 12th man doesn't belong only to Texas A&M.
The next thing you know A&M will file half a lawsuit against the NBA when the league announces its annual Sixth Man Award.
TGIGD.
At last we don't have to read any more stories, hear any more questions about how remote Seattle is. No more analysts claiming nobody knows about the Seahawks because they play in far-away Seattle.
The fractured way geographically challenged football scribes wrote about the Seahawks last week, you'd think the only guys who've ever covered the team are Lewis and Clark.
Listen to the pundits on cable TV, and you'd think they were the Siberia Seahawks. You'd think the city was discovered by Neil Armstrong. You'd think the only flights to Seattle originated out of Cape Canaveral.
TGIGD.
You listen to people who should know better talk about the Seahawks, and you'd think this Super Bowl appearance was the first and only accomplishment in Seattle sports history.
They forget that five years ago the Mariners won 116 games. (Come to think of it, that's hard for a lot of us to remember.) Former Mariner Randy Johnson won a Cy Young Award in Seattle. And Ken Griffey Jr. had no problem building his reputation in the same far-off city.
Just because the 21st-century Sonics can't seem to get it right, and want us to build them a new arena before they build Seattle a team worthy of a new place, doesn't mean the city doesn't have a rich basketball history.
Seattle won an NBA championship in 1979. It remains the home of Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens. It has been home to Fred Brown, Gus Williams, Dennis Johnson, Jack Sikma, Lonnie Shelton and Paul Silas.
Tom Chambers won the MVP in the NBA All-Star Game, as a Sonic, in Seattle. The city gave NBA birth to Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton, to Slick Watts and Spencer Haywood. It hosted the NBA Finals in 1996 and there wasn't a hotter, louder, more intimate building in basketball than KeyArena.
The Washington men's basketball team was a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament last March. Across the state, Gonzaga remains a national power. Anybody ever heard of Adam Morrison?
Enough people noticed Seahawks wide receiver Steve Largent and Huskies and Seahawks quarterback Warren Moon to vote them into the Hall of Fame. The summer before last the Seattle Storm won the WNBA championship. And, once upon a time, Washington was a football power that frequented the Rose Bowl and the Top 10.
TGIGD.
You just get a little tired of people referring to Seattle as some backwater when you know it's the home of the Seattle Opera's world-renowned Ring Cycle. When you see its local theater companies winning Tony Awards. When its Pacific Northwest Ballet continues to challenge itself, combining innovative works with the classics.
Isn't it funny that Seattle Symphony maestro Gerard Schwarz has been able to survive the terrible "isolation" of Seattle and has created an international reputation.
Jonathan Raben, Charles Johnson, Sherman Alexie and David Shields are among the many great writers living in or near the city. And the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson lived and worked in Seattle.
The city is the home of Pearl Jam, which after all these years remains one of the world's hottest bands. And just for the musically impaired who continue to refer to the Seattle music scene as grunge, the expiration date on that term was, oh, about 1995.
TGIGD.
Didn't Microsoft start shrinking the world three decades ago? Isn't Microsoft based in the Greater Seattle area? Aren't the co-founders of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, from Seattle?
Thanks in large part to Microsoft, we live in the wired age. I can have e-mail arguments over sports with soldiers in Mosul. I can file columns from the top of Kilimanjaro. So you mean to tell me people still think Seattle is isolated, somewhere between the Yukon and Uranus?
The point of this rant is that the Seahawks' anonymity has nothing to do with geography. The Seahawks' games are televised. The highlights of their games are shown on every cable outlet every Sunday, just like the Giants' games and the Patriots' games. You can follow them on your computer, your cellphone, you name it.
People weren't paying attention to the Seahawks because, for 20 years, they didn't win. Want to isolate yourself from the world? Just lose, baby.
And it seems every time the Hawks played a potential breakthrough game, they broke down. They lost in overtime in the playoffs in Green Bay. They lost in the last seconds in the playoffs to St. Louis at home.
But the only real similarities between these Seahawks and all of those other Seahawks are the name and the logo. This team wins. And the world pays attention when you win.
It's 2006. Lewis and Clark aren't in the house, and the only geography that matters on this day is that Seattle is this close to its first Super Bowl title.
Thank God it's Game Day.
posted by Glen at 8:20 AM
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