Mark Tye Turner - Notes from a 12 Man: A Truly Biased History of the Seattle Seahawks

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Table of Contents

For my father, Ned, who took me to my first Seahawk game,
along with my first Husky football, Husky basketball, Pilot,
SuperSonic, Sounder, and Mariner games.

INTRODUCTION

A few years back I had one of my many late-night epiphanies. Usually these epiphanies involve what I should be doing to better my life, such as trying food that doesnt come from a drive-through window. However, this epiphany was different. It told me I needed to write a book about my favorite team, the Seattle Seahawks. Seattle being one of the lesser-noted NFL franchises, the library of Seahawk literature is only slightly larger than the meat locker at a vegan restaurant.

Maybe you are a longtime fan of the team, going back to when the expression Zorn to Largent was heard almost as often in Western Washington as Its just drizzling outside. Maybe you came aboard when Chuck Knox first brought the team to postseason glory. Or maybe youve only recently become a fan. If so, welcome. You are about to enter a sports time machine that will revisit some of the Seahawks best (and worst) moments, with game stories, factoids, pop culture tidbits, and history dating back to the teams beginning. Its my intention to share with Seahawk fans (and NFL followers in general) my recollections of and insight about a team thats had a special relationship with its fans simply known as the twelfth man.

Who am I and why am I writing this book? Ive been a fan of the team since the Seahawks first set foot on the artificial turf inside the Kingdome. I am a worlds fair kid, born in Seattle during the citys Century 21 Exposition, aka the 1962 Worlds Fair. This means Im as old as the Space Needle (soon this will be the Northwest equivalent of the expression old as the hills).

The 1970s was a landmark time in Seattle sports history, and growing up during this period you watched the town transform into a major league city. You were old enough to remember when the area only had the Sonics and Huskies and was starving for both Major League Baseball and the NFL. Back then, wed lost our baseball team when the Pilots moved to Milwaukee in 1970, and the NFL consisted of a couple of preseason games at Husky Stadium. If you were lucky, your dad would drive you 800 miles during the summer to see baseball games in the San Francisco Bay area. But the NFL? Forget it. Those games happened during the school year, and there was no way you were going that far on a weekend. However, when the Seahawks and Mariners finally arrived within a year of each other, a 70s Seattle kid could appreciate the privilege of being able to watch local NFL and MLB teams.

When I moved to Los Angeles after college in the late 80s, my fanaticism for the team didnt waver. If anything, it grew. I have spent my professional life working in television as a writer and producer, somehow earning an Emmy along the way. Im really just a Seahawk geek, along with being a movie geek, a music geek, and a microbrew geek. My wife, Terry, wishes I were also a make more money geek.

What kind of Seahawk fan am I? Devoted is a good word to describe my fandom. Because I live in LA, I dont have season tickets, but I watch every game via the NFL Sunday Ticket on my DirecTV satellite dish. I am not one of those fans who paints their face or has turned their entire basement into a shrine to the Seahawks. Primarily because Im allergic to body paint and I dont have a basement.

Im a fan who records the highlights from ESPNs NFL Primetime and NFL Films of every Seahawk win. In recent years, Ive also been clipping good plays directly from the game broadcasts for my own highlights reel. (Lest the NFL be alarmed, these are purely for my own collection, with no outside distribution.) I also have a number of full games that I can watch during the off-season to get my Seahawk fix. I am a fan who, at his wedding reception, had a table named Seahawks. To appease the family and friends of Terry, whos from Pittsburgh, we also named one of the tables Steelers. I am a fan who is something of a sports savant because I can recall obscure Seahawk knowledge and win many a sports trivia bet.

Until recently, when I would inform someone in LA that I was a Seahawk fan, it was not uncommon for the response to be Huh? or worse, Why? I think many longtime Seahawk fans, even those living in Washington state, have had their fandom questioned on occasion due to the teams lack of Super success. Years ago when I was a producer at E! Entertainment Television, I met Cowboy defensive back Larry Brown, who was getting a tour around the network offices. I told him that I was a Seahawk fan. He just laughed, shook his head like he was looking at some fool, and said he was sorry for me.

I think a number of Seahawk fans have chips on their shoulders because of what we feel is a lack of respect for the team around the league. There are a few reasons for this attitude. Despite the Hawks being around for over 30 years, the team still has a bit of the new kid at school image. Often the new kid isnt accepted, but rather, ignored. Until the Hawks win the Super Bowl or draft another Boz, the team will always be somewhat under the radar. The late NFL Films narrator John Facenda (aka The Voice of God) once said, The Seahawks had been the team born on the wrong side of the tracks. He was actually making a dramatic play off an NFL Films shot that started from Seattles railroad tracks before panning upward to the Kingdome, but you get the picture of how the rest of the league sometimes views the Hawks.

The teams geographical location has also made it the most remote franchise in the NFL. To give you an idea of how far away Seattle is from the rest of the league, compare it to Chicago. In the distance between Seattle and its nearest NFL cities, San Francisco and Oakland, Chicago is closer to 17 teams. When you are not seen, you are not heard. Cable television coverage and the Internet have shrunk the metaphorical distance between the Seahawks and the rest of the NFL, but the physical distance will always exist.

However, being so remote does have its advantages. The Seahawks have always been more than just Seattles team. They are really the Pacific Northwests team. The Hawks are the most popular NFL franchise not just in Washington, but also in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia, and Alaska. There are actually several large groups of Seahawk fans who fly 1,000-plus miles from all over the 49th State to Seattle for every home game.

More recently, the Seahawks have developed significant followings throughout Planet Earth. I know of fans in New Zealand, Norway, and every other country starting with the letter N (except North Korea, where overlord Kim Jong-il is a Raider fan, which means everyone in North Korea is a Raider fan).

A Seahawk fan hopes for success, savors victory, and doesnt take winning for granted. Longtime fans have also had to endure an evil owner, Ken Over Behring (last name pronounced BEAR-ing), who, after wearing down a once-proud franchise, nearly stole the team to Southern California. (Sadly, the SuperSonics were not spared a similar horrible fate.) Seahawk fans have rarely felt the true season lows that bring you ridicule on the late-night talk shows and a very high draft pick. However, weve felt even less the great elation of a championship. The middle is where the Hawks have been throughout most of their history. Consequently, in some NFL circles, the team has been known as the epitome of average. I dont think its meant as a compliment. Being average doesnt lend itself to the sort of Shakespearean drama that attracts most sportswriters, but it does carry its own kind of pain for fans. You know a great win against an upper-echelon team at home will be followed by a brutal road loss to a mediocre franchise in the Eastern Time Zone.

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