I still really dislike the Broncos and Raiders (but, oddly enough, not the Chargers and Chiefs) from the Seahawks' days in the AFC West.
Even so, I rooted for the Broncos against the Cheatriots when Peyton Manning was with the Broncos. Lesser of two evils or something. I also hoped the Broncos would win Peyton Manning's final game. The Seahawks had already beaten Manning and the Broncos in a Super Bowl. I wanted Manning to win another title, and I thought Cam Newton was an undeserving league MVP, so I figured it was a little less bad for the Broncos to win that one. I guess that means I dislike the Raiders more than the Broncos, because I don't remember ever actually rooting for the Raiders.
But since then, my loathing for the Broncos has been stronger than any other factors, so it's been easy to root for Bronco failure at all times since Manning's retirement.
I enjoyed XLVIII just a little bit more because it was the Broncos and The Teeth that my Seahawks were curbstomping on national TV.
And I absolutely love that the team Schneider fleeced in the Wilson trade was the Broncos. Making the Seahawks that much better was a great accomplishment, and that alone would make me happy. But in addition to doing his job well during the 2022 offseason by making the 'Hawks better, Schneider also made me even happier by simultaneously making the Broncos noticeably worse, and possibly ruining a chance they might have had at a Super Bowl window.
As for the Gold Diggers, I actually liked them in the '80s and rooted for them quite a bit. I really enjoyed watching them give The Teeth and the Broncos a thrashing on national TV in Super Bowl XXIV. I was living in Chicago at the time. I remember I called my dad in Maine a few times during that game to celebrate specific moments. At some point, The Teeth was sacked, and my dad answered his phone to hear only "SQUASHED LIKE A BUG!" and the click from the caller hanging up.
However, I grew tired of the Gold Diggers around that time, and the only times in my life I've rooted for the Cowboys were when they were the only hope to stop the Gold Diggers in the early-to-mid 1990s. I didn't root for the Cowboys in Super Bowls, but I wanted them to be strong and stop the Gold Diggers. Putting the Gold Diggers in our division only reinforced a dislike that already existed.
I remember rooting for the Rams in some games when I was a kid, let's say in '76-'79 or so, but I rooted for the Steelers against the Rams in the Super Bowl after the '79 season.
And that gets us to another big change in team likes and dislikes. I loved those 1970s Steelers teams. I loved that they could beat the Cowboys. I loved that they could beat the Raiders.
I had autographed pics of football players framed on the wall of my room. Sure, I had several Seahawks, Zorn being the most important to me at the time, even though I knew he wasn't even close to being the best player among them, but I also had Bradshaw, Swann, and Stallworth, and I think I had at least one defensive player, but I don't remember. The Bradshaw one was cool, because as I had done with the other players who sent me autographed pictures, I had written to him c/o the team address (in Pittsburgh) I found in the back of one of my dad's issues of Football Digest, but the envelope that came in the mail for me with the autographed picture had a Louisiana postmark.
Now, of course, I call them the Title Stealers and think of them as Rapelisburger's team. I wish them misery and failure in the same way I wish for the Broncos, Raiders, Gold Diggers, Rams, and Cardinals to experience misery and failure.
In '99, I lived in Sacramento. I got weed from a guy there, and we became friends. He was a Rams fan. He started inviting me over on Sundays to watch football games, and it was fun to watch that Rams team play so well. I was even rooting for the Rams in games I didn't watch with my Rams-fan friend, and I had started doing so before finding out he was a Rams fan, because the team was just so fun to watch. I remember telling my friend to treasure the moment, because the Rams looked like world-beaters and the Kings were looking like title contenders in the NBA, and the Gods of Sport can be very cruel (as a Seahawks fan, I was painfully aware of this), so a moment when two of your teams are that good is really special. By the time the Super Bowl came around, I was back in Santa Barbara to finish a degree. It was easy for me to keep rooting for the Rams at that point, and I was a little shocked (and scared) about how close they came to failing to win the big one.
The Rams got screwed in their next Super Bowl (two seasons later) when the Cheatriots did their cheating thing, and even though I dislike a bunch of idiot Rams fans who troll Seahawks fan sites, I feel bad for them having lost a title game they really should have won because Kraft, Belichick, and Brady are cheaters.
Oh yeh... speaking of the Cheatriots, I grew up in southern Maine. I was never a Patriots fan, but almost all the kids I knew were. I learned to play football and played about a jillion neighborhood games with my neighbor Chuck, the son of the town's police chief. It was my dad who taught me how to throw the ball and spent countless hours throwing with me, but Chuck was the one who taught me the basics and got me started playing when I was six. He also gave me his outgrown shoulder pads and "Pat Patriot" helmet to use. Chuck was about three years older than I, so I looked up to him a lot. When we were playing football, we were also talking about football a lot, and so I knew a lot about the Patriots teams of the '70s. I remember Chuck talking about "Sam Bam" Cunningham, "Hog" Hannah, Sam Adams, Julius Adams (Chuck liked the guys in the trenches), and others. When we wanted to throw "the bomb" in a neighborhood game, we'd call it as "Grogan to Francis," referring to the Patriots' QB and Pro Bowl receiving tight end at the time. Sometimes when there were just a few of us around after school, instead of playing a game, we'd just throw the ball around and do reenactments of big plays from the latest games. I remember Chuck calling out big touchdowns for Stanley Morgan in some of those reenactments of recent Patriots moments.
It was easy for me to root for the '85 Bears and simultaneously against the '85 Patriots in the Super Bowl in early '86, and I of course rooted for the Seahawks and against the Patriots in the two Seahawks games my dad took me to see in Foxborough ('84 and '86), but I respected the Patriots fans around me back then who endured some pretty awful seasons, and I still respect those same people still being fans of the team even though Kraft came in and installed his culture of cheating with Belicheat and the Greatest Cheater of All Time, transforming them from the Patriots into the Cheatriots.
