When It's Okay Not to be Estatic About a Super Bowl Win

I'm going to admit, as much as I enjoyed watching the Seahawks win Super Bowl 48, I wasn't quite as emotional and giddy as when the Giants beat the Patriots six years ago, mostly predicated on this play.  On that Super Bowl day, I remember my brother and I tackling each other in euphoria because of that win over the then 18-0 Patriots.  Even in the NFC championship game when Sherman tips the ball away from Crabtree, there was a rush of emotions that simply was not there last Sunday.  Of course the fact that the game was never in doubt takes away from the excitement of a victory in the making. 

So the question is -- what does that say of me that I wasn't hooting and hollering over the Seahawks' first ever championship win?  However, before we get there, a short history of my sports fandom to put the question into context.

I was born in New York and lived in New Jersey for the first thirteen years of my life, and those were the formulative years of my sports passions.  The Giants in the 80s were my team as were the terrible Yankees.  I lived in Orlando for more than three years, and that was where I gained my passion for the Magic.  When I moved to Seattle when I was 16, I gained an appreciation for the teams here -- the Mariners, the Seahawks and the Sonics, but they never really impressed me that much simply because they were not my teams I first fell in love with.  Eventually, I learned that I hated baseball, and the Sonics were stolen from Seattle.  That really only left the Seahawks, and I grew to appreciate them more after the Shaun Alexander days and simply from becoming a fan of the NFL rather than a fan of the Giants.  What it comes down to is that the Seahawks are the only Seattle team I can root for now.

Flashforward back to present time, I knew that I had to go to the victory parade yesterday.  It was an opportunity to celebrate the championship in a way I never could with none of the Giants' Super Bowl victories in this decade or in the 80s.  Against my better judgement, I woke up at 6 AM to carpool with a friend, and we found ourselves curbside at Third and Washington at 8 AM.  People were everywhere despite the 26 degree early morning, and everyone seemed very excited. 

Impromptu Sea-Hawks chants erupted for no reasons, and the bane of my existence that day, besides the cold weather, were the annoying horns wise people were selling for $5 in blue or green.  It was truly a horrible noise -- like a yeti in heat dying.  Still, everyone was dressed up in their jerseys and carrying their flags and other Seahawks memorabilia.  The streets were packed, and people were on the balconies and buildings, looking down upon the celebrations. 

To be honest, I've never really perhaps been the most vocal of fans in any sports.  Sure, I'll shout out my frustration or shout a "Yes!" accompanied by clapping, but I don't really want to chant, do a lot of high fives or scream.  Perhaps it's the outside observer part of me that wants to take everything in -- put things in context, but I'm more likely to watch than to participate actively in the revelry of others. 

So even when the hour late parade started -- apparently the players got stuck in traffic considering 700,000 people were trying to find parking and jam themselves into the two mile parade route -- and after really five hours of waiting, the parade finally rolled up on our section of the route, I found myself smiling a lot, but not screaming, cheering or chanting "Seahawks" like everyone around me.  I was happy as each Duck or Humvee rolled up with players waving and celebrating, but perhaps I was not quite as ecstatic as everyone else.

Soon after, the parade ended, and people either began to follow them to Century Link/Safeco Field or filing out of the city.  I felt proud and happy, but there was no tears of joy or elation on my behalf, and I wondered if that was a problem.  However, later than night, it finally dawned on me what was happening. 

For a big part of my life, I was kind of a transplant because of all the moving I've done.  It has made me feel sometimes like an outsider because I don't have those life long friends that other people I know seem to have.  My history with people seemed a bit abbreviated because of that, but now, after twenty years of living in Seattle, this is the place I've lived the longest.  It shames me to think of all the trepidation I had when I found out we were moving from Orlando to Seattle.  I knew that there were a lot of Asians here, and living in predominately white Orlando, I grew to hate the fact that I was Chinese and to hate all other Asian people as foreigners.  I wanted to be white, and I was coming to place -- a church -- where they were a lot of Asians.  And that scared me.

But this is the place God wanted me to be -- to come to the church I attend now and have the friends and family that I have.  This Super Bowl is the cap on that realization.  Things might have seemed more exciting when the Giants won the Super Bowl, but the reason why this championship is more important to me is because this is my home.  This is my city, and I was celebrating my home town team's championship with the people I care about in a way that I will never have with the Giants or the Magic.  It's okay that I'm not overflowing with emotion for this Super Bowl because, instead, there's a contentment in the victory.  I'm home, and there's no other place I'd rather be.

--Jonathan

A Super Bowl Blog Not About Sports: The Objectification of Women

We all know what Richard Sherman did on January 19th with the amazing play to get the Seahawks into the Super Bowl and the now infamous rant.  Twitter exploded, and thus began the backlash and the backlash to the backlash of Sherman's words.  The media hoped that he was going to carry that enthusiasm to Media Day this week, but he was on his best behavior.

One of the most curious questions, though, that was posed to him was about the stereotypical link between football players and strippers, perhaps best personified in the incident regarding one certain Pacman Jones. 

“As far as money is concerned, all of you football guys has gone into the strip clubs and are raining [money] down on the strippers. I think that’s a bad example for our young ladies. How can we stop that. I think it’s a bad example that we setting for our young girls that they need to be strippers. How do we deal with that issue?”

It was an entirely unfair question, to be sure.  To lump Sherman in with "you football guys" simply because he's a football player or perhaps because of the color of his skin and/or corn rows(even though we do not know the ethnicity of the questioner) is prejudice, to be sure.  Sherman's answer was very gracious and well thought out on the fly, and I certainly commend him for that. 

However, regardless of the fairness of the question pointed at Sherman, I think it still points out something that is an interesting phenomena tangentially related to sports -- the objectification of women and the abuses thereof. 

The first, and greatest, issue that is obviously linked to football is the Super Bowl and sex trafficking.  By no real fault of the NFL, the potential for abuse in such a large gathering increases greatly as the sinful desires of sinful people on "vacation" yearn to be scratched.  It seems to me that a lot of advocacy groups have been doing a great job of making the issue more aware in the public, but obviously there's always room for improvement as long as one person is being taken of advantage in this way.  I don't have too much to add to this that hasn't already been said, but it never hurts to pray for the mortality of this country and world.  The sooner we can eliminate sex trafficking, the better we'll be. 

Another issue which might surprise you that I'm bringing up is cheerleaders.  I don't know what your stance is on the relevance of cheerleaders in sports, but it's a big thing.  You just need to go to any sports team's website, and you can see just how much the cheerleaders are promoted.  In fact, it's a big business between all the appearances, calenders and other such ways that sports teams use cheerleaders and their image.  The only problem is that the cheerleaders don't get a significant cut of that pie.  Just recently a lawsuit by a Raiderette hit the news cycle, prompting other cheerleaders to speak out against this problem.  Gregg Easterbrook, a columnist that I respect for his thoughtfulness although I don't not always agree with him, had this to say about cheerleaders.  (Search for cheesecake calendar.)

Much like the issue of the universities making hand over hands amount of money on their student-athletes, it seems extremely unfair to me that the teams make so much on their cheerleaders and not give them a fair share of it.  Instead, the conversation always comes down to -- the student-athletes are being compensated by their scholarships, or cheerleading is a hobby; they get it back with the national exposure they get.  I certainly believe in capitalism, but there's limits to how much we should be haggling one another.  If cheerleaders should not be allowed in sports because of the objectification, then fine, get rid of them.  But if it continues, they should still be able to be fairly compensated for their efforts. 

Obviously the latter issue is not quite as dire as the former because cheerleaders are going into a situation eyes wide open, but there certainly should be a better way we can act as a society by treating women better than we do.  Let's bring this all full circle with Sherman's response to the unfair question.

“Well, I’ve never gone into a strip club and thrown money, so I couldn’t tell you. I guess trying to understand that there are other avenues, there are other ways you can make money, that women can do anything they want in this world. You can go out there and be a CEO of a company. Like I said before, the same can be said for kids in the inner city — the ceiling is limitless and don’t limit yourself to those possibilities and those circumstances.”

Absolutely we should be encouraging women to not give into the expectations of society that looks are paramount, and that they are a thing to be objectified by men.  Let's all have open discourse about this age old problem and be better people for it ... for the betterment of our society and for the glory of God.

--Jonathan

P.S. - Go Hawks!