The moment I read that the Seattle Seahawk’s first-round draft choice, Russel Okung (OT), had suffered a high ankle sprain in last weeks preseason match against the Greenbay Packers, I started punching a pillow.
Having grown up in the Northwest and watched Seattle sports for the entire 25-years of my life, I’ve experienced only a modicum of success amongst a giant heap of complete and utter failure. This new development does not bode well for a change in that trend.
Is there a reason, besides bad luck, for this seemingly perennial underperformance? And how should we, as Seattle sports fans, react to another precursor of our impending doom?
There is definitely a mentality amongst Seattle fans that our teams are often dealt the worst card in a deck of make-or-breaks. Think of the 2005 Super Bowl during which the referees made blatantly incorrect calls that affected the game, a transgression that, five years later, those same referees have finally apologized for.
Some people, including myself, were so dumbfounded by the calls that they questioned whether there might be some conspiracy at play. Perhaps NBC wanted to see Jerome Bettis get a Super Bowl ring so he could flash it for the cameras when he retired from playing and began broadcasting. There certainly was a sense that we had been cheated and it didn’t feel good.
There are countless instances like this that have occurred during the regular seasons of the Mariners, Seahawks, and Sonics of old, but I’m beginning to realize that we must stop blaming hard luck and start looking for real problems, like management.
The Bill Bavasi era for the Mariners and the Tim Ruskell era for the Seahawks were moments in our sports history that we would all love to forget. As if in seconds, Seattle watched the World Record Mariners of 2001 and the Super Bowl contending Seahawks of 2005 crumble to the ground in a heap of broken bodies, bad trades, huge contracts, dugout brawls, pre-emptive retirements and losing seasons.
And lets not forget the good old Super Sonics, the only professional team, besides the Storm, to win a championship in the history of Seattle sports. Thanks to Howard Schultz, Clay Bennet, David Stern and Greg Nickels, that franchise endured their own Trail of Tears and is now playing, and playing well, in the Ford Center of Oklahoma City.
The likely reaction that a Seattle sports fan will have to this recollection of failures is to punch a pillow. It makes me angry and it should make you angry that these teams have allowed these atrocities to happen. Now, with the news that our newest left tackle, the man who is supposed to protect Matt Hasselbeck’s fragile blindside, is potentially injured into the beginning of the regular season, it seems like the bad luck is coming around again.
However, I say have faith. As Steve Kelly writes in his latest column, “There are signs everywhere that sports in Seattle are emergent.” The Storm are looking good. The Sounders are improving and peaking at the right time. The Pete Carrol era seems promising and positive, even if Russel Okung does miss a few games. Maybe things are on the up and up.
Anyway, while Seattle sports fans complain about their terrible teams, terrible management, terrible bad luck, they still come out and watch the games and they still have hope at the beginning of the season, no matter how bad a team looks. So even though I’m punching the pillow with all my might, I know I’ll be watching that first game on September 12th and rooting loudly for the guys in green and blue, with or without big Russel on the left.
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