Today’s Super Bowl has been 38 years in the making for the Island branch of Seahawks Nation. John Wilson, a Victoria businessman and owner of four Seattle Seahawks season tickets, didn’t hesitate when asked if he would have gone to New York or sold his Super Bowl tickets if he had won them in the lottery conducted among Seahawks season-ticket holders.
He would have been at MetLife Stadium today.
“You can’t put a price on moments,” said Wilson, co-owner of hockey’s Peninsula Panthers and also part of the Victoria Grizzlies ownership group.
When it comes to moments, this is the Big One for Seahawks Nation, which stretches from Alaska, down through the Island and Lower Mainland of B.C. through to Oregon.
It brings home a sporting truism involving big-league pro sports followings. There are the usual pockets on the Island of the continent-wide Habs, Leafs, Yankees, Dodgers, Raiders, Cowboys, Packers et al Nations that you would find anywhere. There are even pockets of Vikings, Bengals, Chiefs or even Padres fans. But if you threw a blanket over the Island, it’s clear that you would net a common thread of regional affinity for the Seahawks, Canucks and Mariners, with the Blue Jays definitely thrown in because they are a unique national one-off.
The bonds are strong, especially for those born and raised on the Island, For those who remember the ferry, car and bus trips from Victoria to the old Kingdome — Zorn to Largent and King Beer to bathroom — it’s only the second time in 38 years of franchise history to cheer their “local” team in the Super Bowl. That affinity has never waned. The club estimates that more than 10 per cent of the fans in the stands at Seahawks home games are from B.C., with 300 to 500 of those each game coming from the Island.
Victoria twin sisters and passionate Seahawk fans Sharon White and Sandy McClary are among those from the Island who will be at MetLife Stadium today for the Super Bowl, from high end-zone seats cheering on their beloved lads in blue, grey and that rather unsettling electric green.
“We would both sit on the field-goal uprights if that’s what it takes to see the game,” White said.
In doing so, White upheld a good-natured promise she made when Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin was in Victoria over the summer as part of a team promotion that drew long lineups to meet him, a couple of Sea Gals cheerleaders and the Seahawks mascot Blitz.
“I had asked Doug Baldwin [when he was in Victoria] if I would see him in New York in February because we’re planning to go if they get in,” White said.
“He emphatically said: ‘Yes, you will.’ So, basically, he’s kept up his side of the bargain by making clutch catches all year. Who am I to not honour my side of the bargain?”
Sister McClary jokes that White now dreams of meeting Baldwin atop the Empire State Building after a Seahawks Super Bowl victory, à la An Affair to Remember and Sleepless in Seattle.
Those local Seahawks fans who can’t be in East Rutherford, N.J., today, are there in spirit.
Tej Labh of Victoria has bled Seahawks blue from the beginning in 1976. He plans on a quiet, reflective Super Sunday watching the game with wife Janet and three other couples.
“The Seahawk fan in me has been passed down to my son, Dylan, and he is hosting a party at our place for about 15 of his buddies. It’s been a long wait,” Labh said.
“Hopefully, the Hawks will make the oddsmakers look bad. I think the cold weather may favour the Seahawks. Hopefully, Percy Harvin can stay healthy for the whole game. He is capable of the big play that may seal a Seahawks win.”
Two double garage doors are painted in Seahawks colours in Cordova Bay.
The artists are sisters Courtney and Brooke Ellis, who caught the Seahawks bug from their dad, Gord Ellis.
“It took two days to paint the doors,” said Courtney, a former field hockey and basketball player and now UVic nursing student.
“My dad was away when we did it. But we knew he was going to like it. We were going to get new doors, anyway.”
The 12th Man flag, emblematic of Seahawks fans, flies proudly over the Beach Drive house of Christopher Causton, who was mayor of Oak Bay for 15 years and council member for nine more. He caught the Seahawks bug during his two years in the restaurant business in Seattle in the late 1970s. It was either that or not be able to ask out Seahawks super fan Elizabeth, who became his wife.
“I had no choice if I wanted the relationship,” Causton chuckles.
Nearly four decades later, Christopher and Elizabeth, like many Islanders, are hoping for the first Super Bowl victory in Seahawks history. Talk about Sleepless in Victoria.
You certainly won’t be getting get anything resembling shut-eye at Island bars, which are expecting today to match the 2011 Canucks-Bruins Stanley Cup Game 7 and 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics Canada-USA men’s gold-medal hockey final in terms of beer and money flow. Not to mention more than a few tons of chicken wings and nachos thrown in for good measure.
Season-ticket holder Wilson didn’t win the lottery to be at MetLife Stadium today. Instead, he will be with, oh, just a small party of 60 Seahawks diehards who have reserved a portion of the Tally-Ho Pub.
Wear a Broncos jersey at your own peril. But some will do so with pride while swimming against today’s tide of blue. Victoria Royals hockey player and Colorado-raised Brandon Fushimi has fond memories of watching Broncos games every Sunday with his dad Mike while growing up. Mike is in Victoria visiting from Thornton, Colo., and today will be a special father-son Broncos bonding moment for the pair. Super Bowls will do that.
Reserving is required today if you want the Super Bar experience. The so-called “home” team is in the big game and local establishments are feeling that intense Seahawks interest. They say this Super Sunday will be off the charts.
“We’ll be at capacity [at $20 a ticket] by 12:30 p.m. for a 3:30 start,” said Marc Babin, special events manager for the sprawling Strathcona Hotel bar-lounge complex on Douglas Street.
“We’ve had to open up our night club downstairs to accommodate all the people [up to 1,700], but will only charge $5 to get in down there.”
Babin says these aren’t just general Super Bowl fans that you normally get, but specifically “genuine Seahawks fans.”
His facility will even feature Seahawks Girls. OK, not the real Sea Gals like he had with the Baldwin tour in the summer, but a reasonable facsimile.
“It’s going to be loud in MetLife Stadium, and it’s going to be loud up here as well,” Babin said.
And why not? From King Beers to those quaffed today — from Cortez Kennedy to Richard Sherman — it’s been a long wait for a first Super Bowl championship for Seahawks fans from Portland to Port Alberni.
