The 12th Man—June 2, 2008
*
ESPN.com put up a poll recently on officiating that asked respondents several questions about whether baseball should implement instant replay, whether respondents boo officials, have respondents ever worked as officials on any level, etc. Question 8 on the poll was the most interesting, as it asked respondents which example of bad officiating irritates the most. As of 1:45pm on June 1 with over 34,000 votes tallied, “Steelers-Seahawks Super Bowl” leads the selections with 24.5% of the vote.
Somewhere, somebody read that last paragraph and started groaning. I can hear it now: “he’s not going to complain about Super Bowl XL AGAIN, is he?” Well sir, you’re damned right he’s going to complain about Super Bowl XL again. And why shouldn’t he… er, I? ESPN.com apparently thinks it is a worthy topic of conversation; they added the question regarding examples of bad officiating to their poll and they picked Super Bowl XL as an option in that question. Why shouldn’t Seahawk fans who felt robbed by that game (and justifiably so) be allowed to vent?
“Get over it,” or variations thereof are the general responses to any Seahawk fan that talks about Super Bowl XL. Yet why should we have to get over it? Poll after poll confirms what Seahawk fans have long asserted: the officials’ turned in a piss-poor performance in that game and that performance hurt Seattle’s chances of winning it. That was Seattle’s first-ever Super Bowl after 30 years of mediocrity and anonymity, and it was lost at least in part because of the officiating. The people saying “get over it” would carry just as big of a grudge (if not bigger) if the shoe was on the other foot. Others admit that the officiating was poor but quickly assert that Seattle wouldn’t have won the game anyway. This is a conclusion, not a fact, and a questionable one at that. While bad officiating wasn’t the only reason Seattle lost, the case can be made that the Seahawks would have won if Bill Leavy & co. hadn’t had their thumb on the scale. Ultimately, we’ll never know what WOULD have happened.
What DID happen is a game that cast a pall on an otherwise remarkable season, the kind Seahawk fans have never experienced before. On a whim, I popped in the 2005 NFC Champions DVD this past weekend and sat back and enjoyed Seattle’s road to their first Super Bowl. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than two years since the Seahawks’ magical season, and that DVD brought the memories flooding back: Matt Hasselbeck, Darrell Jackson, Shaun Alexander before his career implosion, Joe Jurevicius’ all-too-brief tenure in Seahawk blue, the rebirth of the 12th Man, Josh Brown’s improbable game-winning field goal to beat the Cowboys, etc. I can remember where I watched every single game, the look on Jay Feely’s face as he missed yet another potential game-winning field goal, and most of all how it felt when the clock struck zero on the NFC Championship game, and players and fans alike celebrated as the explosion of fireworks and blizzard of confetti capped off the best game in Seahawk history.
NFL Films’ Steve Sabol summed up the 2005 NFC Championship game by saying, “if you are a Seahawks fan, and you make it to heaven, every day will be like that one.” That was the case that glorious night. Yet 2005 highlights have a bittersweet flavor, even the NFC Championship game, because of what would happen just a few short weeks later. I had to turn off the DVD prior to its coverage of Super Bowl XL. I have a full copy of the game but have never watched it. It hardly seems fair that Seattle’s best season could be tainted to such a degree, but for many fans like myself that’s just the way it is. Which is another reason why anyone tempted to say “get over it” should have the common courtesy to bite their tongues. The Seattle Seahawks may never get that close again, may never have that kind of season again. In fact, regardless of how well Seattle does or does not do in the future, it will NEVER be like 2005 again because 2005 was the first year that the Super Bowl really, truly seemed possible. Seattle’s storybook season was stolen from them in the end, and that’s not something anybody has the right to tell us to “get over.”
Yet maybe, hopefully, Seahawk fans will look back on 2008 as a different kind of story, one in which Seattle gets back to the big game and manages to win it. It would be a Hollywood ending of sorts given that 2008 will be Mike Holmgren’s final year as coach. It would go a long way towards healing the wounds inflicted by Super Bowl XL, and Seahawk fans old and new would finally have the championship football team they’ve deserved for so long. Yet those fans could have had that team on February 5, 2006. Without the bad and one-sided officiating in Super Bowl XL, Mike Holmgren could have hoisted the Lombardi Trophy just over two years ago. And the season in which Seahawk fans saw the reward for their years of faithful support could have had the ending it deserved.
“Get over it?” Not a chance.
ESPN.com put up a poll recently on officiating that asked respondents several questions about whether baseball should implement instant replay, whether respondents boo officials, have respondents ever worked as officials on any level, etc. Question 8 on the poll was the most interesting, as it asked respondents which example of bad officiating irritates the most. As of 1:45pm on June 1 with over 34,000 votes tallied, “Steelers-Seahawks Super Bowl” leads the selections with 24.5% of the vote.
Somewhere, somebody read that last paragraph and started groaning. I can hear it now: “he’s not going to complain about Super Bowl XL AGAIN, is he?” Well sir, you’re damned right he’s going to complain about Super Bowl XL again. And why shouldn’t he… er, I? ESPN.com apparently thinks it is a worthy topic of conversation; they added the question regarding examples of bad officiating to their poll and they picked Super Bowl XL as an option in that question. Why shouldn’t Seahawk fans who felt robbed by that game (and justifiably so) be allowed to vent?
“Get over it,” or variations thereof are the general responses to any Seahawk fan that talks about Super Bowl XL. Yet why should we have to get over it? Poll after poll confirms what Seahawk fans have long asserted: the officials’ turned in a piss-poor performance in that game and that performance hurt Seattle’s chances of winning it. That was Seattle’s first-ever Super Bowl after 30 years of mediocrity and anonymity, and it was lost at least in part because of the officiating. The people saying “get over it” would carry just as big of a grudge (if not bigger) if the shoe was on the other foot. Others admit that the officiating was poor but quickly assert that Seattle wouldn’t have won the game anyway. This is a conclusion, not a fact, and a questionable one at that. While bad officiating wasn’t the only reason Seattle lost, the case can be made that the Seahawks would have won if Bill Leavy & co. hadn’t had their thumb on the scale. Ultimately, we’ll never know what WOULD have happened.
What DID happen is a game that cast a pall on an otherwise remarkable season, the kind Seahawk fans have never experienced before. On a whim, I popped in the 2005 NFC Champions DVD this past weekend and sat back and enjoyed Seattle’s road to their first Super Bowl. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than two years since the Seahawks’ magical season, and that DVD brought the memories flooding back: Matt Hasselbeck, Darrell Jackson, Shaun Alexander before his career implosion, Joe Jurevicius’ all-too-brief tenure in Seahawk blue, the rebirth of the 12th Man, Josh Brown’s improbable game-winning field goal to beat the Cowboys, etc. I can remember where I watched every single game, the look on Jay Feely’s face as he missed yet another potential game-winning field goal, and most of all how it felt when the clock struck zero on the NFC Championship game, and players and fans alike celebrated as the explosion of fireworks and blizzard of confetti capped off the best game in Seahawk history.
NFL Films’ Steve Sabol summed up the 2005 NFC Championship game by saying, “if you are a Seahawks fan, and you make it to heaven, every day will be like that one.” That was the case that glorious night. Yet 2005 highlights have a bittersweet flavor, even the NFC Championship game, because of what would happen just a few short weeks later. I had to turn off the DVD prior to its coverage of Super Bowl XL. I have a full copy of the game but have never watched it. It hardly seems fair that Seattle’s best season could be tainted to such a degree, but for many fans like myself that’s just the way it is. Which is another reason why anyone tempted to say “get over it” should have the common courtesy to bite their tongues. The Seattle Seahawks may never get that close again, may never have that kind of season again. In fact, regardless of how well Seattle does or does not do in the future, it will NEVER be like 2005 again because 2005 was the first year that the Super Bowl really, truly seemed possible. Seattle’s storybook season was stolen from them in the end, and that’s not something anybody has the right to tell us to “get over.”
Yet maybe, hopefully, Seahawk fans will look back on 2008 as a different kind of story, one in which Seattle gets back to the big game and manages to win it. It would be a Hollywood ending of sorts given that 2008 will be Mike Holmgren’s final year as coach. It would go a long way towards healing the wounds inflicted by Super Bowl XL, and Seahawk fans old and new would finally have the championship football team they’ve deserved for so long. Yet those fans could have had that team on February 5, 2006. Without the bad and one-sided officiating in Super Bowl XL, Mike Holmgren could have hoisted the Lombardi Trophy just over two years ago. And the season in which Seahawk fans saw the reward for their years of faithful support could have had the ending it deserved.
“Get over it?” Not a chance.
posted at 05:32:03 on 06/02/08
by Shadowhawk -
Category: "The 12th Man" by Will Harrison
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