Seattle Seahawks

The spring of 2002 I broke up with my live-in girlfriend of 11 years and moved into the studio apartment where I reside to this day. At the end of my first summer here the woman I was dating at the time sort of insisted that I get a television. I had not owned a TV in ten years. To keep her happy, I dutifully complied with the request and promptly went out and bought a 13-inch color Magnavox with a built-in VHS player. And for the next year and a half that is all we used it for -- to watch videos. Then a young guy I knew from the local Green Party invited me over to watch the Patriots-Panthers Super Bowl (February 1, 2004 in Houston, famous for the Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson halftime show "wardrobe malfunction"). It was a good game. I caught the bug again.

I went out and bought an antennae for my 13-inch Magnavox so I could watch National Football League games, which I have been doing religiously since the 2004 regular season. In these ten years I have probably seen every Seahawks game (minus the preseason ones).

I loathed the Matt Hasselbeck Seahawks. Every Sunday I would root against them. My dislike for the team was influenced by the hardball stadium politics played by owner Paul Allen after he bought the Seahawks from Ken Behring who had unsuccessfully attempted to relocate the club to Anaheim. Though head coach Mike Holmgren had a 49ers pedigree, and I was formerly devoted Montana-era San Francisco fan, I didn't like him. He seemed like a seething bully.

A few years after the Seahawks lost to the Steelers in Super Bowl XL, the franchise was in freefall. Holmgren was gone after a lame duck 2008 season, leaving the team to the uninspired leadership of Jim Mora.  Mora went 5-11 and was fired with three years and $12 million left on his contract. He was that bad. Pete Carroll, escaping from mushrooming scandal at USC, was brought in for the 2010 season.

But it wasn't the addition of Carroll that turned me from a Seahawks hater into a stalwart fan; it was the acquisition of Marshawn Lynch from the Buffalo Bills in October of Carroll's first season. Lynch more than any other player transmogrified the Seahawks from the Holmgren-Hasselbeck team of whiny, brittle privilege into a tough, no-bullshit ball club.

I could go on here about all the other necessary components, first and foremost of which is the fast, big defense, followed close by the smart, "just win, baby" play of quarterback Russell Wilson. This is a great young team, the youngest, along with the '71 Dolphins, to win a Super Bowl.

But let's cut it short with some video of Marshawn Lynch dancing by himself in the locker room after Seattle's first Super Bowl win. Click on the link.