When did football strike for me? It was March of 1993 at my Grandma's house, an old wooden place re-done with bright orange and red carpet filled with VCRs and cassette decks and massive 90s-style kitchen appliances, you know the type.There was a stack of VHS tapes in a wicker basket, a lot of them had labels (a lot of them didn't), older family videos, taped tv shows, and one that said 'Super Bowl XXVII'. My memory is fuzzy on the reasoning behind my decision to choose that particular tape. It's possible that, at 7 years old, I had some motivation to care about the NFL, because my family were Seahawks ticket-holders and every August a fantasy football draft with 20-30 people (two people to a team) would happen at our house. It was a day I dearly loved but did not understand in the slightest.
I watched that game probably 10-11 times over the spring and the summer.. The Dallas Cowboys -vs- Buffalo Bills with a Michael Jackson halftime show. For something that launched my love for the NFL, it's funny that the game was a terrible blowout! 52-17 was the final score. I remember Michael Irvin as distinctly cool with his mouth guard, and Leon Lett being run down by Don Bebee was exciting to me every time.
I had no grasp of what led to the Super Bowl, or how it related with the big fantasy football draft in our house at the end of every summer. I just really wanted my Grandma to tape the next Super Bowl. Coincidentally, it was Cowboys and Bills again. This time the game was a lot closer and I was rooting hard for the Bills to redeem their loss, a misery I had watched and re-watched them experience all year. Somehow, watching the Bills lose to the Cowboys in the Super Bowl again, in different fashion than the year before, hooked me to the NFL. I wrote down the stats from both Super Bowls manually, just using the pause and rewind buttons, I added up the yards, catches, attempts for both teams in both games, memorizing the numbers and names and positions. It took days but I was absolutely thrilled to be doing it.
1994 was the year. My mom put me to work during the regular season, adding fantasy football stats together from the newspaper every Monday afternoon before they were hand-delivered and stapled up at the pizza place in downtown Mukilteo every Tuesday. I started to get a grasp of how the Seahawks fit into the NFL and grew to know rest of the AFC West. I got to go to the Kingdome and chant "Smell-way" at the Broncos, I secretly liked the Chargers because of their uniforms and player named Marion Butts (hahaha!) but I knew "we" did not like the Chargers, Raiders, Chiefs or Broncos.Now at 9 years old, I decided I needed a favorite player. I swear to God this is true, I took the 1994 NFL Sports Almanac into my room, opened it up and pointed to a player. That player... was Jerry Rice. I liked the name, his picture, I liked his stats, and the whole cut of his jib. I'm still not sure why I didn't choose a Seahawk, I guess I didn't really consider it. I know I had a Rick Mier jersey, haha. During my formative NFL years, the Seahawks were a combined 14-34.
Although the Seahawks were on TV in the house every weekend, the first time I truly sat down to experience the NFL live was to watch Jerry Rice break the all-time touchdown record against the L.A Raiders on Monday Night Football. At the end of the season, I literally could not sleep before the 49ers/Chargers Super Bowl, a game I also taped and loved dearly. Strangely, the start of my love for the NFL is dominated by blowouts, the 49ers destroyed the Chargers 49-26. Jerry Rice had 149 yards and 3 Touchdowns.
Through the 90s, I was absorbing all the teams, teaming with Grandma in fantasy football, learning all the players and team histories. I wore that 1994 Almanac down to a pulp, reading it every night (long past the actual 1994 calendar year).My NFL love expanded to include the entire league's journey to the Super Bowl. I obsessed over the playoffs making tape cassette radio shows and glue-stick collages.
When did I become a proper and devoted Seahawk fan? It was my freshman year of high school during the Seahawks' 8-2 start to the 1999 season (a season ending 9-7 and a wildcard exit). I followed the Holmgren years, excitedly enjoying the new generation of NFL as well,, Kurt Warner, Randy Moss, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and the Jerry Rice Raiders. By the time the Seahawks progressed through the Mike Holmgren era culminating in the fatefully tragic Super Bowl XL in 2005, I had been following the NFL with a magnifying glass for a solid 10 years.
That is my story. Go Hawks.
-Miles McGillivray
