Are You Ready for Some Football? Really?

If the Seattle Seahawks win the Super Bowl in a couple of Sundays, don't expect riots of glee. Check out this article in the Seattle P-I with the great headline, Refuse to Snooze: Frenzy Slow to Build:

Despite gut-churning levels of noise -- football fans so loud that they constitute an actual weapon in the Seahawks' team arsenal -- collective response to Seattle's first Super Bowl contest might best be described as polite, though pleased, bewilderment.
[...]
[T]he city is notably devoid of Seahawks paraphernalia. Downtown, the only commercial evidence even vaguely reminiscent of the blue-and-green team was a scoop of mint ice cream at Stone Cold Creamery on Westlake -- and it was a tastefully pale green at that.

Walk the entire block-long lobby of City Centre and spy not a single Hawks notion. Scan the reader board outside Icon Grill, and learn only that Valentine's Day is coming.

But people are starting to feel the excitement bubbling up:

At Rainbow Natural Grocery on Capitol Hill, Pinn Palermo, admittedly sports-oblivious, acknowledged that the home team victory had created a discernable atmospheric tremor.

"I will say that when they won, there was definitely a change in the air," the part-time cashier said. "But I'm also a yoga instructor, so I feel these things."

I might add here that the first sell-out at Qwest Field, where the Seahawks play, happened when Manchester United came for an exhibition game a couple summers back. This city is definitely a fair-weather-fan sports city.