GUEST POST: The Seahawks - A Reflection of Us

I am pleased to welcome a guest posting today: my sister, Maura Cullen.

Way back in the spring I posted Journeys of Triumph and Adversity making sense of the NFL Post Season as the designated sports fan enabler in a family of fans.  My sister also took to writing to express her thoughts and feelings about the Seattle Seahawk's (our local team) near epic loss at the Super Bowl.

Now here we are, and the season is about to officially begin.  There's been all sorts of little dramas along the way - I tell you, professional sports is great theater!  With the Hawks first official game coming this next Sunday, it's not a bad time to revisit why we become attached to certain teams, and why we remain loyal to them.

This essay is written from the perspective of a Seattle fan, but in many ways it reflects how true fans feel about their teams, anywhere.

NOTE: She refers to people "faithfully donning Seahawks gear every Friday" which is a phenomena around these parts known as Blue Friday.  I was in a local grocery last Friday and they weren't just pushing wearable gear.  You could get blue cupcakes, blue bouquets for your sweetheart.  It's a little hard to ignore and yes, I admit it: I have started reading the sports page again.

Welcome Sis!  Enjoy!
GO HAWKS!

***

Calendar image by graphic artist Dan Boyer
http://www.wildkingdumb.com/

Playing Outside the Box
An Essay by Maura Cullen
(c) 2015

I suppose that it is an occupational hazard for one who has made a career in the social sciences to be constantly fascinated by human behavior. I have been a practicing school psychologist since 1984 and I still find myself in awe and wonderment as to why people, especially groups of people, do what they do.

Now that football season is over until at least mid-summer, I find myself reflecting on the whole phenomenon of the “12’s.”  Why do the people of the Northwest (and beyond, actually) have such a love affair with the Seahawks?  How did an entire region become motivated to faithfully don Seahawks gear every Friday?  Why has Century Link Field become such a dreaded place for other teams to play? Why have Skittles practically become the new state candy?

NEW ESSAY: How a Non-Sports Fan Finds Satisfaction in the 2015 NFL Post Season

The Journeys of Triumph and Adversity

 Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr

By Judith Cullen

(c) 2015

I am not a huge sports fan.  I am not a hater either; it has just never been my thing.  Acknowledging that we are none of us ever completely of one “type”, I am the art-theater-literature geek in the family.  Yet I have found myself in the last two winters being the “sports fan enabler” in our household.  I cook hot dogs, make cocoa, popcorn, and dish up ice cream or whatever else might be the desired accent to the game-watching experience.

I think my dis-relationship with sports goes back to early days.  I have never had much athletic prowess or even a glimmer of talent.  My one brief, shining moment in sports came in elementary school where it became clear I was a desirable player to have on ones team in dodgeball due to my great skill at avoiding the ball in question.  I had enough arm strength to lob the red rubber sphere over the heads of the opposing team to my team in the “jail” section, while managing to avoid being out myself.  A talent for avoidance is not really highly prized in most sports outside of recess time.

Yet, for the last two winters I have gotten wrapped up in the ascendancy of the Seattle Seahawks, our “home” team, in the annals of American football history.  For dyed-in-the-wool sports fans, I am sure the appeal is familiar.  Since we have established that I do not possess a strong competitive gene, then there has to be something else which appeals to my nature.  It is the stories that swirl around it that fascinate me, and observing the great drama of reactions to those stories.  Colorful characters, expanded plot lines (sometimes painfully so), moments of high drama and ludicrous comedy: it’s some of the best theater I have seen in years!