Interesting article about Seahawks fandom

I agree with quite a bit in this article and also disagree..

You can't police how people are supposed to support their team, but the author hits home for me on what kind of support is being given.

http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/seah ... e_left_1.1

Interesting take (sort of)

I like the 12th Man of the 80s...which sort of sputtered and died by about 1994

The "12s" of late are annoying. Maybe it's because I'm in my 30s now.

It's not all, but it's well over 50% at times. The bandwagoners, open letters, petitions to ban players middle aged, women, housewives trying to look cute in beanies etc. get old quickly. It's embarrassing at times, but all NFL fanbases are kind of goofy annoying. I don't know what can be done about it, if anything

A lot of the stuff that gets old is the product of social media allowing stupid stuff to get a foot hold. the petitions, open letters is mostly media driven. If they didn't pay attention to it no one would even know about it.

I like housewives wearing beanies. The more people who are excited about it the better. My wife gets excited for the games now and enjoys the process with me. Much better than having your wife complain that you're watching football and trying to drag you to Costco.

Barthawk":2ti2u94i said:

I agree with quite a bit in this article and also disagree..

You can't police how people are supposed to support their team, but the author hits home for me on what kind of support is being given.

http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/seah ... e_left_1.1

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I don't agree, I remember being in the Kingdome during the 90's where you can talk to the players from the 300 level because it was soooo quiet. I think the biggest difference is the amount of 12's that live elsewhere so there is so much more action from 12's that of course social media allows the absurd to go viral and thus you have more seasoned fans only seeing the 5% that are ass's compared to the 95% of the fans that are great. it is an awesome spectacle watching our fans get up in a frenzy for out team.

We need fewer people complaining about how fans are supposed to be.

Fewer fans (or at least the perception of fewer fans) is why we no longer have the Sonics.

Enjoy it.

austinslater25":3qkmopan said:

A lot of the stuff that gets old is the product of social media allowing stupid stuff to get a foot hold. the petitions, open letters is mostly media driven. If they didn't pay attention to it no one would even know about it.

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Agree wholeheartedly. The era we live in with all the social media allows for the oddest individuals to stand out and the loudest, most obnoxious to be heard. It gives a platform where there never was before. There's no way you'd have seen an article in the newspaper or on the 6 o'clock news about a fan petition or anything of the sort. This instant news times in which we live has created both positives and negatives. I still believe the positives of fans everywhere having almost instantaneous knowledge of what's going on with their favorite teams and players far outweighs the clowns who get attention from the stupid things they do. It's a shame we can't have one without the other, but such is life.

austinslater25":3qkmopan said:

I like housewives wearing beanies. The more people who are excited about it the better. My wife gets excited for the games now and enjoys the process with me. Much better than having your wife complain that you're watching football and trying to drag you to Costco.

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I agree, anything that helps people enjoy the game or at least the experience, I'm all for it. My wife isn't a sports fan in the slightest, but she knew how much a fan I was when we met, and she enjoys the gameday experience at home or the rare times we may have to go out to the bar. She still doesn't care for the game itself, but she may worry more about the outcome some days more than I do, because as much as I try, I just can't be as happy immediately after a loss as I can be after a win.

A little preachy and sanctimonious...........but the sentiment holds true, going to 2 straight SB's has created a big group of bandwagon 12's that are saturating social media with their stupidity.

i.e. protest Cam lady and petition to ban Cam from the Clink idiot.

These are the people that need to go back to doing whatever they were doing before the Hawks became good, because they annoy the hell out of me. Uneducated in not only NFL history, but even Hawk history prior to 2011 or 2012..........yet have no problem popping off on social media proclaiming their undying love.

SeaChickN":1uj5yd57 said:

We need fewer people complaining about how fans are supposed to be.

Fewer fans (or at least the perception of fewer fans) is why we no longer have the Sonics.

Enjoy it.

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Exactly.
We have to take the good with the not so good.
Trying to single out who should be accepted, or thinned from Seahawks fandom would be like trying to sort the fly shit from the ground pepper anyways :lol:

The secret to happiness is to accept that you can not fix other people's stupid.

SeaChickN":29iq1na6 said:

We need fewer people complaining about how fans are supposed to be.

Fewer fans (or at least the perception of fewer fans) is why we no longer have the Sonics.

Enjoy it.

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Agree with your comment regarding complaining but fandom perception is not why we lost the Sonics.

I completely agree with the article. I hate the term the "12's" and it drives me nuts when someone says that. I love the 12th man flag but the new fans do make it about themselves. I love the Sea......Hawk chant in the stadium but find it ridiculous and disrespectful when I am at a Mariner game or a concert. I use to look forward to a night at the bar or a day at work talking about the Hawks but now I choose not to engage. Almost all my best football conversations now are with fans from other teams. I have had season tickets for 10 years and traveled to Glendale twice for games and Dallas once and we are already planning an away game for next year so I think I am a pretty big fan and think we have a fantastic fan base. I definitely saw that Super Bowl weekend last year in Phoenix and this year in Dallas. We lost 3 games at home this year and walking out of the games you would have thought we won. The Sea.....Hawk chants on the ramps out of the stadium after a loss are ridiculous. We lost, go home and come back next week ready for a win. As said above, I agree with this article and really couldn't have expressed my self much better.

One moron has a stupid petition and suddenly the pronoun to use is "we"?

All successful teams with bright future have less than knowledgable tribalistic idiot fans. All of them. Being embarrassed by them, which the author is, I get that. Cringeworthy behavior from a member of your tribe is embarrassing at first glance. but after that, you have to remember that doing embarrassing shit is a human trait, not a Seahawk fan trait.

When we start sucking again sometime in the future it will be interesting to see where all these newbs end up.

Ya I get it, lets just have another Wild over reaction to one lame bandwagoners over reaction.

And lets let the one that screams the loudest and has access to the press decide just how fans should celebrate and act to be "real fans", and when they don't we'll just fire them (just like the petition suggests to do the same).

After this new superfan conquers that job, they then get to move on and decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.

Ya, I get it.

This article is a bunch of bullcr@p. This I'm-a-better-fan-than-you attitude has to go away. Who the **** gave the author the power to decide how people should behave?

This guy is just about as bad as the petition dopes. "Look at me! I'm a better fan than everyone else. Be like me!"

This naval gazing about Seahawks fandom is stupid. Be a fan the way you want to be a fan as long as it doesn't involve wrecking the fun for other people.

I still don't know a single band wagon fan. I know tons of fair weather fans and I can't blame them for getting dragged into this excitement. I remember the Mariners in 95 (refuse to lose campaign) and I got sucked into that. It was an absolute blast but I am the true definition of a fair weather baseball fan. I don't root for another team when the Mariners suck, I just don't follow the sport. But I still don't know one person who was a fan of a different team getting dragged into the Seahawks excitement.

I embrace the fair weather fans because I see it as exposure and the more exposure we get the less the chance of SBXL happening again. We may be irritating to some but that comes with the territory.

I've always been a football fan and even when the games were blacked out would drive to Rosland with my brothers to watch the games because we couldn't afford the tickets, parking and beers and it wasn't much farther to go there than to Seattle from Fall City. So I understand the fanatic side but I have also lived through the days where we were shit on simply because we didn't have a voice to stand up for ourselves.

As this era cools some will go back to what they were doing before but many will remain hooked and be the next generation of fanatics. We need that so embrace it and welcome them.

Bandwagoners can eat a crap sandwich though. Don't want them or need them.

But there is definitely a difference between someone getting caught up in the excitement of success and someone who is so insecure that rooting for the current hot team gives them some level of self worth.