Find Your Valentine
Slog
News & ArtsWednesday, May 27, 2009
Sports The Sounders and The Score
Posted by Eli Sanders on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 6:10 PM
Last week I floated some rather involved theories for why the Seattle Sounders have taken off in such a big way. There was the Seeding Theory, the Setting Theory, and the Age of Obama Theory. Now, as promised, the simplest theory of all:
They're winning.
After all, Seattle isn't exactly bursting with victorious pro-sports teams. And here the Sounders are, fourth in the Major League Soccer Power Rankings, playing rough enough to get regular red cards, advancing in U.S. Open Cup competition. Or, as commenter Swearengen less-enthusiastically put it way back when:
All other sports teams in seattle suck, the sounders just happen to suck the least at the moment.
Proponents of this theory often pair it with a flip-side anxiety, like the one expressed by commenter Hernandez:
The problem is that everyone here is a fair-weather fan, and thus loses all hope, enthusiasm and memory of past success as soon as a team loses a few games. I really hope that doesn't happen to the Sounders once they (inevitably) have a lousy season sometime down the road.
Maybe that gloomy prediction will prove true. Until then, please enjoy the excitement—possibly "fair-weather," possibly not, only time will tell—of the guys seated behind me back in April when Steve Zakuani headed in this goal against the San Jose Quakes. That's my hand shooting up into the air as the ball hits the net.
Video by Carlos Escobar.
3
I don't think that red cards are a good thing, but there's some thrill out of knowing your team can mix it up when need be.
Another theory that I had after going to Denver for last weekend's game: the Sounders have such a fanbase because no one said that they shouldn't. No one presented the team as just for families. The "soccer is for pussies" crowd is much quieter. That could be down to the excellent marketing. The ownership group did a very good job, I have to admit.
Another theory that I had after going to Denver for last weekend's game: the Sounders have such a fanbase because no one said that they shouldn't. No one presented the team as just for families. The "soccer is for pussies" crowd is much quieter. That could be down to the excellent marketing. The ownership group did a very good job, I have to admit.
7
They play fast, and don't suck. Plus, all the douchenozzles in Seattle like the seahags, leaving the Sounders for the rest of us.
8
Seattle fans, taken as a whole, are boring and not particularly bright about their sport regardless of what you all tell yourselves. It's not particularly the fault of the current crop of Seattle sports fans as it is the simple lack of history. Grow up in a state where your grandfather can tell you about going to a game "when I was a boy" and you'll get the picture.
10
@8, I'll buy the "lack of history" argument for baseball and the M's. But the modern game of football (and I mean real football) is dramatically different than the game played 50 years ago. I'm not sure if hearing Seahawks stories from my 90 year old grandfather would make me a better or more knowledgeable fan.
11
@8: I have a feeling that my grandfather (if he wasn't dead for 15 years) would have a lot more to say about soccer than any other sport, except maybe skiing.
12
I do agree with Hernandez up to Seahawk fans: Unlike fans of Baseball and Basketball, they've filled up the Kingdome and
Qwest even with the Seahawks sucking. We'll have to wait to see if Sounder fans react like most typical fairweathers when the Sounders lose a bunch of games.
Qwest even with the Seahawks sucking. We'll have to wait to see if Sounder fans react like most typical fairweathers when the Sounders lose a bunch of games.
16
@5 Oh jeez, I didn't literally mean everyone. Calm down.
That comment was primarily responding to all the commenters who were talking about how the Seahawks suck, have always sucked, etc. One bad season and everyone forgets that they were one of the more successful NFL teams over the last 10 years. If the Sounders have a few more good seasons and then shit the bed 5 years down the road, don't be surprised to hear Seattleites talking shit about them like they were never good. Here's hoping they just keep winning.
That comment was primarily responding to all the commenters who were talking about how the Seahawks suck, have always sucked, etc. One bad season and everyone forgets that they were one of the more successful NFL teams over the last 10 years. If the Sounders have a few more good seasons and then shit the bed 5 years down the road, don't be surprised to hear Seattleites talking shit about them like they were never good. Here's hoping they just keep winning.
17
Here's hoping Freddie Ljungberg gets over his fucking migraines. Does anybody know if he managed to play in the Open Cup match this week?
18
@10, who's ignorant of history, now? Seattle's had a baseball team for over a century, bar a couple of years in the early seventies, and when the Rainiers were winning titles in the 1940s, the PCL was the equivalent of a major league, not the sham it is today, with stars like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, as well as a number of great players who chose to play their entire careers in the West Coast league, for comparable pay as in MLB, great Rainiers like Jo Jo White and Fred Hutchinson.
And your grandfather would surely have remembered hearing the voice of Leo Lassen, the Dave Niehaus of his day, and the best announcer who ever worked in this city.
MLS "power rankings" are a joke, by the way.
And your grandfather would surely have remembered hearing the voice of Leo Lassen, the Dave Niehaus of his day, and the best announcer who ever worked in this city.
MLS "power rankings" are a joke, by the way.
19
@17, nope, though I doubt it was because of migraines. Open Cup is pretty low-level, we don't use our strongest team. Keller, Ianni, Wahl, Brown, Hurtado, Sturgis, King, Forrest (Riley), Nyassi (Jacqua), Le Toux, Leveque -- funny how impossible that info was to find on their website.
20
This "fair-weather fan" crap is bullshit. First of all, with a couple of rare exceptions (Chicago Cubs, Green Bay Packers), all major league sports teams see a decline in attendance when the teams are losing.
Second, in Seattle, that decline is pretty damn small. Look at the Mariners last year, with some of the best attendance in baseball despite one of the worst records in the league. And the Seahawks were mediocre for 15 years and had a multi-year waiting list to buy season tickets. It took an owner who worked very hard to fuck the fans to end that.
Maybe Seattle has an inferiority complex. We've had bad to mediocre teams for so long, we tend not to get too optimistic about the potential for success. But we do support our teams through the bad times.
Second, in Seattle, that decline is pretty damn small. Look at the Mariners last year, with some of the best attendance in baseball despite one of the worst records in the league. And the Seahawks were mediocre for 15 years and had a multi-year waiting list to buy season tickets. It took an owner who worked very hard to fuck the fans to end that.
Maybe Seattle has an inferiority complex. We've had bad to mediocre teams for so long, we tend not to get too optimistic about the potential for success. But we do support our teams through the bad times.
22
@18, that's a good point. Seattle has a rich baseball tradition that precedes the M's. However, I'm sympathetic to the argument that many M's fans aren't knowledgeable because there's a lack of institutional memory: Seattle had no major league team for much of the 60's and 70's; in the 80's it was a new franchise, terrible team, and played inside. Baseball tradition seems to have skipped a generation.
Fandom in the NFL, on the other hand, isn't built on tradition in the same way as baseball, so I don't think #8's argument is valid in that respect.
Fandom in the NFL, on the other hand, isn't built on tradition in the same way as baseball, so I don't think #8's argument is valid in that respect.
23
seattle is a latch-to city...they need something to be apart of and soccer promotes this system of allegiance...it fits seattle ideology perfect..."i'm with them and everything else sucks DUDE" I UTTER TO THINK HOW MUCH THAT PROSHOP SOLD THE FIRST MONTH...I LAUGH MY ASS OFF SEEING THESE TOOLS ROAMING AROUND IN FULL SOUNDERS REGALIA, SCARVES AND PANTYLINERS KNOWING PEOPLE WILL PAY WHAT EVER THE PRICE TO BE ALLIGNED WITH ANYTHING IN WASHINGTON.
Advertisement
Most Commented on Slog
-
SL Letter of the Day: Pill The Homos! by Dan Savage
-
Dear Huffington Post... by Dan Savage
-
Because Guns Make Us More Safer by Goldy
-
The Rick Santorum Rally in Tacoma Probably Could Have Gone Better by Paul Constant
-
Slog Bible Study: Deuteronomy 21:10-14 by Goldy
-
The AP Is Reporting That Whitney Houston Is Dead by Paul Constant
-
SL Letter of the Day: Daddy Loves Who? by Dan Savage
-
Because Guns Make Us Safer by Goldy
-
Gay Kids Are Still Killing Themselves by Dan Savage
-
Gregoire: "This is signed!" by Eli Sanders
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Comments (23) RSS