Thursday, February 13, 2014

It

The night before Super Bowl 48, I completed a ritual that I had been doing all season: I played the Seahawks' upcoming opponent on Madden. With the difficulty set at Pro, the second easiest level, I always routed the other team. I thought maybe doing this brought luck to the actual Hawks on Sundays. The strategy had only failed me three times all season.

I led the Seahawks to a 51-10 Super Bowl victory that night. The defense destroyed Peyton Manning and the offense made all the plays. Percy Harvin was unstoppable. The game cut to a darker version of Russell Wilson on stage hoisting the Lombardy Trophy. Wouldn't that be nice, I thought.

I'm a die-hard fan of the Seahawks, along with the Mariners, Gonzaga Basketball, and the Sonics when they still existed. But playing Madden allowed me to enter a different reality. A reality free of the hopelessness and despair caused by it. 

It is that deep, inherent knowledge that no matter what, we will always, inevitably, somehow end up losing. Come up just short. Game over.

It is cheering on the best regular season team in the history of baseball, then watch them roll over to the Yankees in the ALCS. It is looking on in awe one moment as your team pads a lead and prepares for the Elite Eight, and the next seeing your star player crumbled on the court crying as that lead vanishes. Heartbreak City. It is hopelessly looking on as the Sonics are stolen in broad daylight. It is jumping in elation after climbing back from a three score deficit in the fourth quarter to take the lead with 30 seconds left...then falling to the ground as a last second field goal ends your season. It sucks.

When you know that it is going to happen, you're never fully invested. Even in victory, you have to hold back just a bit. You can't push your level of joy to full throttle, because you're certain that things will eventually crash and burn. When it happens, the despair is so familiar, but it still burns.

As I watched Super Bowl 48, I prepared for it. Even after Percy Harvin sliced through Denver's special teams for a score to open the second half, the score now 29-0, I still had doubt. That touchdown wasn't a dagger. All it did was set an even grander stage for it to rear its ugly face. But Richard Sherman didn't feel the same way. Microphones caught him laughing after the play. "They don't got a chance," he said.

Even though the storyline favored Peyton Manning and the Bronco's offense,  the players on our team didn't really care about that narrative. The Broncos were a juggernaut, a Swiss Army Knife of weapons designed to pick apart any defense. But we were a tank. For four quarters, the Hawks steamrolled the Broncos as if they were playing on Madden with a low difficulty setting. It disappeared, no longer relevant, no longer inevitable. Nonexistent.

When the game ended, it wasn't there. I didn't really know how to feel. I'm still kind of figuring that out. But I do know now that a championship is possible. It is not some unstoppable force that shatters hopes and dreams. That honor goes to the Seahawk defense. Now I feel free. I don't think I'm the only one.