I've been living in the state of new jersey for several months.
When it became clear that the Seahawks had a championship-caliber team, suddenly I was living in a sports town. Grocery-store Russell Wilson jerseys popped up everywhere, overnight. Just Russell Wilson. Occasionally a Marshawn Lynch, but the ratio is 200:1. Certainly no other players, and god forbid the jersey be older than two months. There are no Hasselbeck or Alexander or Easley or Zorn jerseys, similar to the faded jerseys that adorn other fan bases. The Seawhawks jerseys are all modern, shiny, new. I saw a woman in a vintage Largent jersey a couple months ago and almost lost my head and proposed.
These instafans have something else in common. Whenever I'm at, say, the dog park and Russell Wilson's doppleganger comes up to talk about the team as "we," I don't ask my usual question, "What position do you play?" I go straight for the throat. "I'll give you 20 bucks if you can name 10 players." I have asked this question probably two dozen times these last three months, and each time the we-ing, bejerseyed stranger has failed to collect. Am I jerking off? Yep. But I despise these people. They are an abomination. It's like grabbing a BB gun and shooting the dog who shits all over your lawn, while he's squatting over your daisies. Are you not entitled?
Like with any form of social interaction, Seattleites learned everything they know about fandom from beer commercials. They know how to look the part, but their understanding beyond face-paint and high-fives is painfully superficial. Predictably, their stolen, sole tradition celebrates not a player or the team, but themselves. They pour enormous energies and moneies into celebrating their own greatness.
But despite the crowds in whatever the stadium is called now, Seattle is a horrible sports town. Ghastly. You know how in your town, you can tell whether the team won or lost merely by people's moods the next day? Yeah, we don't have that here. You can tell by jersey sales the next day, but that's it. You know how in your town, the local high school teams have followings? How the local Dairy Queen and gas station put "Go Lions! Maul the Rams!" on their signs? I only see that when I get on a plane. High school sports do not exist here. College sports only exist during that heartbeat per season when it looks like UW might be good.
Perhaps the best illustration of Seattle's self-vaunted 12th Man came in 1999, when the Seahawks made the playoffs for the first time in years. The Seattle Times ran a whole page called "How to pretend you've been a Seahawks fan all along," stuffed with names to drop and events to mention at parties. They should have added the names of 10 current players.
But my most personal example dates back to the Seattle-Pittsburgh Super Bowl in 2006, when I bought tickets from a Seahawk season-ticket holder and sat in the Seahawk season-ticket holder section, pictured here.
Upon my return, several Seahawk fans volunteered that the crowd for Seattle's first Super Bowl in franchise history was 90% Steeler fans because Detroit is so much closer to Pittsburgh than Seattle. Without a trace of irony or recognition, they said this to the Steelers fan who drove two hours to get to the Seattle airport to fly to Detroit. No, folks, it's not the mileage. It's the fakeness.