A sea hawk showing its colors.

So. Big game today. Lots of people (myself included) have not been all that interested in our local football team in past years (last one included), but this year feels a little different. Something about the team's, and the fans', combination of champion swagger and underdog chip-on-shoulder—two things that seem mutually exclusive on paper but are, in fact, harmonizing around here this year—seems to be creating a unity force field around groups of people that don't usually have all that much in common.

This impression was cemented for me while watching the recent championship game in a scruffy bar on Vashon Island, where a bunch of people I never expected to see trading enthusiastic hugs and high-fives were doing just that: wizened old Asian couples, some really drunk and shouty lesbians, an old Rasta guy with dreds as thick as my wrist, a serious-looking African American gentleman who played pool throughout the game, and a pack of young white bearded guys who I swear I could individually identify by smell from a few feet away. (Each one had his own distinct mix of tobacco smoke, weed smoke, body odor, motor oil, and dog.)

So I called a lifelong fan, who will remain anonymous, to see what he can tell us newcomers about what today feels like for the lifers. Topics discussed: Whether winning matters, underdog grit, what the Seahawks have done for 4Culture this year, Pierre Bourdieu's 1978 essay "How Can One Be a Sports Fan?," anticipation, why the Seahawks are more fun to watch than other teams, self-fulfilling prophecies, and recent dreams the fan has had.

How long have you been a fan?

Well, this was the first football team that was forced on me, just because of location, and I started paying attention when I was 6 or 7 years old. So, like, 30 years? Lots of kids start their sports fandom that way. A lot of it has to do with location.

Some sports fans, my dad for example, claim not to be attached to geography and who wins and loses. They say they just appreciate a well-played game, no matter what happens.

That's one way of being involved with sports without having to get your heart broken. Growing up watching the Seahawks was such a frustrating thing. Last year was such a big deal because we sucked for so fucking long. I just wanted this—wanted this—and never had a team with a championship in my entire lifetime.

Did it feel strange to win for once?

Absolutely. You have this identity with the underdog—it's part of the Northwest-sports-fan ethos. There's this thing called "battered fan syndrome" where you just think "we're going to lose, we're not going to come back, this is what we do." Russell Wilson has changed that.

How?

By winning!

It seems like the team has its own kind of culture.

A lot of swagger and attitude. Lots of good teams have a bit of swag, and all that stuff compounds on itself, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like Richard Sherman yelling, "I'm the greatest corner in the league!" That's when he became the greatest corner in the league.

We're the fastest-growing city, we've got these sports teams, this swagger—it's all coming together. People talk about "identity" and putting "community" together, and it just doesn't happen. But when it does, like this, it's amazing.

I was in the grocery store and the produce dudes were talking about Marshawn Lynch's contract and Kam Chancellor possibly injuring his knee, and barely paying attention to their radishes. This is something easy, something people can get behind, something that means something but actually doesn't mean that much. It's something you can get behind without offending anyone. It makes you think about where you're from and what it makes to be part of your community.

I've thought a few times over the past year that there must be something going on with race attached to all this. We're a city that people normally talk about as being very white, and this has been a very big year in terms of the race conversation nationally, and maybe people are channeling some of those feelings into the 12th Man thing, cheering for a for a Seattle institution whose most famous and loved members are not white.

I'm a middle-aged white man and fucking in love with a bunch of 26- to 30-year-old black men. If I was hanging out with Marshawn Lynch or Russell Wilson, I'd be over the moon, even though I'm 10 years older than them. I'd be all like "ohmygod, ohmygod." But that's just something you grow up with as a sports fan. It's hero worship.

So you think the race thing, in terms of the Seahawks, is a stretch?

You could tease that out, but I think it's a little bit of a stretch.

Do you, as a lifer, resent the fair-weather fans?

No, I don't care. It's good to see it unite the city. I say the more the merrier.

Does anticipating today's game feel different for you than last year's?

Yes, today feels different. Are we a flash in the pan? We're young, locked into contracts, and have got this really good mindset. This could be a dynasty. If we kick the shit out of them, it'll really feel different from last year. I still want it really, really bad, but having won one is like, "checked that off the list."

And it translates to teams like the Mariners. They see that we can have it if we spend the money. But that's mildly embarrassing—the amount of time and effort and emotional energy spent on something that I know deep down doesn't really matter.

Well, why do you spend all that time and emotional energy?

The civil answer is that I love it. I grew up with it. I've always been interested. I'd be watching the game today no matter what, even if the Seahawks weren't in it. But not with the same level—of recipe research and cleaning the house. I can appreciate a Marshawn Lynch run as much as a really bad-ass painting.

Watching someone who's the best at what they do and succeed at it so well—football is chess on a different level. It's fun to watch strategy, fun to watch the competition. It's reality TV.

I guess you're right—people doing things in real time for real stakes, with the possibility of getting really hurt and really making a lot of money.

On yeah. And the hotel/motel tax paying off the Kingdome—did you hear about 4Culture making an extra $15 million this year on that tax? People are attributing it to the Seahawks bringing in a lot of people from out of town. That's a real-life consequence.

I watched some football as a kid, then fell away from it, but have been watching more in the past couple of years. And it seems to me like the Seahawks are just more fun to watch—they improvise more. It's not just two machines ramming against each other with a few variations on five or six plays. Do you think they're more interesting to watch, or have I just not watched enough football?

They are fun to watch. It's true. What's different about this team—this coach, Pete Carroll, is the second-oldest coach in the league, and he's jumping around and cheering. They have wellness coaches, they do yoga, they practice meditation, they do a lot of things differently. He's a positive coach. He doesn't yell and cut people down.

And this team has a chip on its shoulder. Lots of those guys were drafted really late or not at all. That's where it combines with Seattle. Our music scene, our arts scene, we're like, "We are that good!" It gives you grit and attitude.

Here's a goofball question, but... in 1978, the French critical theorist Pierre Bourdieu wrote an essay called "How Can One Be a Sports Fan?" I mostly love it for its title. But he argues, if I'm reading it right—and I may have gotten it totally wrong—that we live in a society that is so totalized by capitalism and the economy that we like to create the illusion that we have some autonomy and freedom. And we do that by developing "tastes." We're a hiphop fan or a punk-rock fan, we like golf or we like basketball—it's all to give us an illusion of freedom. But sports, he says, goes deeper, because it's about having control of our own bodies: We can run this fast, we can swim this many strokes, we can even dance to a rhythm. It's this persistent lie that we're telling ourselves that overstates our actual agency within the social and economic mechanisms that determine our lives. So. [Laughs.] What do you think about that?

[Laughs.] Well, the body thing—this is what it triggers in me. As a kid growing up, I used to emulate Clyde Drexler and Dominique Wilkins and do a reverse-jam on the basketball hoop. I think there's some part of the male ethos that thinks, "If I had the ball, I could run like Marshawn Lynch." Being an adult, I realize that's utter bullshit, but it's nice to have some part of that dream still alive.

I had a dream recently that I was going to my brother's wedding and got my tuxedo and somebody said "we need you now" and put me onto the field for the Superbowl. And I caught an interception and ran in for a touchdown. I was thinking "oh my god, I'm going to be the Superbowl MVP! This is incredible!" I get off the field, everyone's cheering, and someone hands me the suit for my brother's wedding. And I thought "oh my god, I'm about to experience this all over again, this is amazing!" And then I woke up.

I've heard you talk about dreams where you're put on the field before, but I thought they were anxiety dreams.

Yeah, it's weird. Still, as an adult, I've had multiple football dreams. The others were like "oh my god, I'm on the field and I don't know the playbook." The other version was more like "I'm the shit!"

Do you, as a lifer, have any advice for the fair-weather fans today?

I'll say this: It's not always gonna be like this. Maybe for awhile. But the truth of fandom is whether you can stick with 'em through thick and thin. It'll be interesting to see what happens when we start losing. But now it feels really good.

Also, be nice to people who don't care about football. Lots of people hate the sports fans: the chanting, the drunkenness, the violence. After 12 beers, and after kicking the shit out of an opponent, you're going to the QFC—be nice to the little old lady who has no idea what happened.

Have you been a bad sports fan?

Mmm... mostly it boils down to me needing to piss somewhere and pissing in a closed storefront or an alleyway.

That seems pretty mild.

One bad sports fan makes us all look bad.