Our Man in Chicago
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I was born and raised in Wheaton, Illinois, a city 25 miles due West of Chicago. I was six years old when the 1985 NFL season started.
It was at that point that I made the boldest decision I've made then or since: I became a Seattle Seahawks fan.
I'll explain as much as I can regarding my mindset at the time: I collected football cards, and although I didn't know an NT from a ROLB, I pored over what minutiæ I could understand: the Seahawks had an undeniably cool mascot, logo and colors, and they appeared to hail from a city that only ostensibly existed. Although they were clearly an underdog team, they boasted several Topps All-Pros, whatever that meant. My juvenile mind, all precocious and contrarian at the time, boggled at this team's spectacle on cardboard. At the time, I didn't know that there were rules about these things; a man must follow his hometown team, lest he be called a deserter or deviant. And it was 1985. Near Chicago. Near Ditka and Walter and The Fridge.
What was I thinking?
Suffice it all to say that my father's determined lack of interest in the Bears' success led me to understand that I was free to choose my own team. And so, I did.
My father was a Landry man, and you couldn't blame him for that; any kid growing up as a Theologian's son in Tonkawa, Oklahoma would have been. My father's Big Games were not Chicago/Green Bay or Chicago/Detroit - they were Dallas/New York or Dallas/Washington. Dashing Danny White, and not the punk Jim McMahon, was his QB. And as temperance was his guide, my father was not a fan of the Bears' brash behavior. Even today, a team recording and releasing a song called The Super Bowl Shuffle in October (still shocking to me) would be seen as more than just tempting fate, and they probably wouldn't become beloved worldwide for it. Dad wasn't alone in his beliefs; at least one local preacher used the Bears to illustrate Pride coming before a Fall. At the end of the day, no force holy or unholy could have stopped the Bears from Lombardi's Trophy that year.
But I wasn't even seven yet. For all I knew at the time, the 1985 Bears were the 1984 Bears were the 1986 Bears. I had no real frame of reference on reasonable NFL hype levels at that point. Hell, I barely knew what the Super Bowl was.
After a few years of following Seattle literally via the backs of football cards and the stray Sports section at the local library - there was no other game in town, there were no other Seahawk fans around, and we didn't have a "sinful" cable box - I received a life-changing gift at the age of nine: a subscription to The Sporting News. The weekly tabloid-formatted magazine proffered box scores, a weekly update for all 28 teams, and the occasional in-depth feature on guys like Kenny Easley or Curt Warner. It was certainly pithier than the George Michael Sports Machine, and it was a lot of information to be received in a part of the country where getting a mere Seahawks tee shirt was a near impossibility.
As I came to know more about the game itself, I became a stronger Seahawks fan in the process. I've had to be. I've been there through Krieg-to-Largent and Hasselbeck-to-Engram, but also 2-14, 4-12, and the McGwire/Stouffer/Kemp/Gelbaugh Era. I was jumping up and down for the 2005 NFC Championship game and soaked in Alexander's special season, but I remember when a Jet helmet was a football, when Anthony Wright suddenly became god, and when Kitna collapsed versus TB. I cheered for for Walter Jones and Tez Rex, but also had to live down Hass's OT call in GB, Boz/Bo, and simply, XL. I've been pelted with snack food and unprintable insults when Seattle came to Soldier Field. As an adult, I even had to teach workplace Bears fans better Seahawks insults because "Sea Chickens" is lazy and just makes no damn sense.
So the number 12 means something to me, especially in the Windy City.
I've been following .Net for years as a lurker, and I suppose that now is as good a time as any to sign up and be counted amongst the 12s here. It's still a bit absurd to me that my team - a team that essentially no one else within hundreds of miles followed - would at some point be noticeably cheered-on by people across the country. It's akin to a man stranded on an island crossing over a ridge and finding thousands of people just like himself.
Thanks for reading this far. I'm Chicago at heart; for all its faults, I love my city. But I am still a Seattle Seahawks fan.
TL;DR: 25 miles due East of Wheaton, 137.6 decibels in my heart.
- Our Man In Chicago
It was at that point that I made the boldest decision I've made then or since: I became a Seattle Seahawks fan.
I'll explain as much as I can regarding my mindset at the time: I collected football cards, and although I didn't know an NT from a ROLB, I pored over what minutiæ I could understand: the Seahawks had an undeniably cool mascot, logo and colors, and they appeared to hail from a city that only ostensibly existed. Although they were clearly an underdog team, they boasted several Topps All-Pros, whatever that meant. My juvenile mind, all precocious and contrarian at the time, boggled at this team's spectacle on cardboard. At the time, I didn't know that there were rules about these things; a man must follow his hometown team, lest he be called a deserter or deviant. And it was 1985. Near Chicago. Near Ditka and Walter and The Fridge.
What was I thinking?
Suffice it all to say that my father's determined lack of interest in the Bears' success led me to understand that I was free to choose my own team. And so, I did.
My father was a Landry man, and you couldn't blame him for that; any kid growing up as a Theologian's son in Tonkawa, Oklahoma would have been. My father's Big Games were not Chicago/Green Bay or Chicago/Detroit - they were Dallas/New York or Dallas/Washington. Dashing Danny White, and not the punk Jim McMahon, was his QB. And as temperance was his guide, my father was not a fan of the Bears' brash behavior. Even today, a team recording and releasing a song called The Super Bowl Shuffle in October (still shocking to me) would be seen as more than just tempting fate, and they probably wouldn't become beloved worldwide for it. Dad wasn't alone in his beliefs; at least one local preacher used the Bears to illustrate Pride coming before a Fall. At the end of the day, no force holy or unholy could have stopped the Bears from Lombardi's Trophy that year.
But I wasn't even seven yet. For all I knew at the time, the 1985 Bears were the 1984 Bears were the 1986 Bears. I had no real frame of reference on reasonable NFL hype levels at that point. Hell, I barely knew what the Super Bowl was.
After a few years of following Seattle literally via the backs of football cards and the stray Sports section at the local library - there was no other game in town, there were no other Seahawk fans around, and we didn't have a "sinful" cable box - I received a life-changing gift at the age of nine: a subscription to The Sporting News. The weekly tabloid-formatted magazine proffered box scores, a weekly update for all 28 teams, and the occasional in-depth feature on guys like Kenny Easley or Curt Warner. It was certainly pithier than the George Michael Sports Machine, and it was a lot of information to be received in a part of the country where getting a mere Seahawks tee shirt was a near impossibility.
As I came to know more about the game itself, I became a stronger Seahawks fan in the process. I've had to be. I've been there through Krieg-to-Largent and Hasselbeck-to-Engram, but also 2-14, 4-12, and the McGwire/Stouffer/Kemp/Gelbaugh Era. I was jumping up and down for the 2005 NFC Championship game and soaked in Alexander's special season, but I remember when a Jet helmet was a football, when Anthony Wright suddenly became god, and when Kitna collapsed versus TB. I cheered for for Walter Jones and Tez Rex, but also had to live down Hass's OT call in GB, Boz/Bo, and simply, XL. I've been pelted with snack food and unprintable insults when Seattle came to Soldier Field. As an adult, I even had to teach workplace Bears fans better Seahawks insults because "Sea Chickens" is lazy and just makes no damn sense.
So the number 12 means something to me, especially in the Windy City.
I've been following .Net for years as a lurker, and I suppose that now is as good a time as any to sign up and be counted amongst the 12s here. It's still a bit absurd to me that my team - a team that essentially no one else within hundreds of miles followed - would at some point be noticeably cheered-on by people across the country. It's akin to a man stranded on an island crossing over a ridge and finding thousands of people just like himself.
Thanks for reading this far. I'm Chicago at heart; for all its faults, I love my city. But I am still a Seattle Seahawks fan.
TL;DR: 25 miles due East of Wheaton, 137.6 decibels in my heart.
- Our Man In Chicago
Yeah, I can totally see where you are coming from. Although I was a Seahawk fan during the time you mentioned, I kept hearing about "'Da Bears" (didn't know about the pronunciation joke then though 
