One of the bewildering things for us PNW sport fans is the unusually high rate of bad luck we seem to tote around. I could go on about all the different teams, but I think I’ll instead refer you to practically every posting by Brandon or Casey instead. Each and every one of us knows what it was like to be a Seattle sports fan this year. It was hellistic. Completely demonic. ESPN did their part to make mention of the down year, to be sure – yet in the big scheme of sports, it seems to me that our nice little city tucked up here in “South Alaska” (as Jimmy Johnson would say it) didn’t get the coverage or discussion that many larger market sport teams might warrant. There is no “curse of the Bambino” in Seattle. Again, I could go on and on about how Seattle gets nothing of the media attention that teams in New England or Southern California get – again, refer to any posting of Brandon and Casey. The point is, Seattle athletics isn’t the media darling that other cities seem to have.
The question, then, is if this is necessarily always a bad thing?
Hold your horses for a few minutes and hear me out. For many of us, this topic can be a tremendous source of frustration. Need I mention Super Bowl XL? Need I talk about the Vancouver Canucks? The Seattle Supersonics? Fans get weary of rooting for a team that the rest of the continent couldn’t give a left testicle about. This sucks in light of the fact that practically every other person out there is a Red Sox or Yankees or Cubs fan. Crap.
Now, to be sure, lack of media attention in light of the rest of the sporting world does frustrate me. That said, I understand that the market for the Seahawks, Mariners, Blazers and Canucks probably aren’t as luxurious sounding as, say the Red Sox, Cubs, or Dallas Cowboys. We have less tradition. Give us time. We’ll leave our mark.
Now, let’s take a look at the seemingly annual gossip revolving around the New York Yankees. Perhaps it’s just ESPN, but it seems to me that people just cannot shut up about who the Yankees have signed, potential management problems, Alex Freaking Rodriguez, etc. It just becomes a great big multi-million dollar soap opera. Same thing with the Lakers and Kobe Bryant. Same thing with Penn State Football and an almost weekly report of athlete-criminal behavior. Same thing with the Dallas Freaking Cowboys – if it’s not Michael Irving getting busted for drugs, it’s Barry Switzer carrying a gun in an airport, or Bill Parcells clashing with the players, or the players clashing with the players, or the drugs clashing with the players. On. And on. And on.
Every time an athlete for any of these teams sneezes the wrong way, the sport media is right there to feel its mist. It makes sense – the larger the drum set, the louder the noise. The media does their best to provide compelling stories for the very well established reader, and as they say – what sells is what is being bought. The problems we always seem to hear about these major market teams doesn’t seem to happen with such frequency among teams like the Kansas City Royals, Calgary Flames, or Seattle Seahawks, however. Even more so, we often don’t hear people refer to the Royals, Flames or Seahawks with notorious nicknames such as “The Evil Empire” or “America’s Team.”
Now, to be sure, these teams have earned their reputation and their nicknames based on their overwhelming success. They’ve got the championships – the Seahawks sure as heck don’t. The point I’m attempting to make here is that, while those teams have had success (and should be proud of it), they also carry with them a lot of unnecessary issues that you at least don’t hear about (and thus worry less about) with some of the small-market teams. Let’s face it, did anyone care that Seahawks receiver Bobby Engram tried to hold out for a contract dispute? Would people have cared were it Terrell Owens? I rest my case.
While we in the PNW don’t have as much to boast of in the big scheme of sporting success (and yes, I know the Royals aren’t in the PNW), we also don’t seem to have to carry the excess baggage of a lot of these other teams seem obligated to. Will this change in the future? I’m not sure - I’d sure as heck like to see us win a championship in something first.
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