Why are you guys so obsessed with the 49ers?

[3Girls'HawkDad]

I think Papaki looks better with a beard

 

[strohmin]

I don't come here too often, but when I do, it always surprises me how much chatter about the 49ers there is on a Seahawks forum. As of today, in "NFL Nation", there are 14 (!!!) threads about the Niners on the first page alone! It seems like there's a thread or discussion for every little bit of news about our team.

Look, I get that we play in the same division and its impact on playoff rankings and such, and yes, your past 2 wins were deservedly big deals... but why so much irrational hate for a team that in all honesty you don't have any kind of "rivalry" history with? It's not like we've clashed in the playoffs multiple times, or have had epic back-and-forth battles. I really don't think any of us older Niner fans would even consider you guys a rival if the media didn't create it or hype it up so much. Maybe you find that snobby, or insulting, but it's the truth. We currently voted on and are celebrating the "Top 10 Moments of Candlestick Park" each game, as the season progresses, and none of those moments involve the Seahawks. For us, we've had history and bad blood that goes back decades with the Rams, Cowboys, Giants, and Packers. Those are the teams we hate.

So I ask, why are you guys so obsessed with the 49ers that you would have 14 threads on 1 page?

You are a tool.

 

[Popeyejones]

Stumbling over landmines here, so I'll start with some disclaimers:

1) There's obviously a real rivalry, and 9ers fans who claim otherwise (particularly while posting on this board, and even more particularly while making threads claiming otherwise on this board :lol: ) are completely full of it.
2) This is also a rivalry that the Hawks are quite clearly currently winning.
3) Silly stuff happens on every forum, and posters should ideally be judged by the quality of their posting, not by the lowest hanging fruit of their respective fanbases.
4) As a general rule "everyone over there" statements are wrong.
5) Despite my fandom, on balance I greatly prefer this place to the Webzone, which is a hot @ss mess IMO, whereas this place generally isn't.

Okay, with all of that out of the way, here it is:

It's really strange how good of a source this forum is for 49ers news. That's not because 9ers fans are posting 9ers news here. Of all the fan forums I've been to (and I've been to a lot) I've never seen a forum generates as many inane and pointless threads about a rival team. Overall I think the quality of posting here is really high, but the archaeological excavating of any and all things that could possibly be negatively spun about the 9ers or people affiliated with them is really atypical. Sorry, but from what I've seen across many forums I believe this to be true.

I've alluded to this before, but I weakly suspect it's two things (which are not intended to offend):

1) The Hawks are an exceptionally good team, and most likely the best team in the NFL, but they haven't won anything yet. The fanbase is as excited about the team as it has ever been, and deservedly so, but until they win it all with this team (which I expect them to do soon, and which wouldn't surprise a single NFL fan) there's going to be kind of a manic edge to some of that very deserved excitement. This kind of manic-edged excitement is compounded by #2.

2) The Seattle-Sports-Victim-Complex isn't universal, but it's a real thing. A proportion of the fanbase feels overlooked and ignored up there in the corner, and has also grown pretty fatalistic and just assumes that things always go wrong in the end. The Mariners were great through the mid to late 1990s but never won a championship. The Hawks were very good in the 80s and 2000s but never won a championship. The only team from Seattle that ever won a championship was bad, still totally beloved, and completely stolen from you guys only to start almost instantly competing on the national stage in the NBA for reasons completely unrelated to the change of scenery.

These two things are a wild cocktail to mix up. You have near manic excitement mixed in with a victim complex and some degree of fatalism. For some folks, no matter what they do, they just know they've been done worse (the worst of all of course, is having been ignored). Basically I think there's some crazy exhaling going on here, and a lot of the inane and celebratory angry 9ers threads (and the smilie, and the sigs) are just kind of some weird form of "payback" for something that most outsiders never even knew existed in the first place.

In the long run I think the team is friggin awesome though, I think they'll payoff on their awesomeness, and I think this weird sorta quirk of a really good collection of posters and fans will fade away into a more typical level of dislike for one's rival.

Sorry for the long post, and again, not intended to offend.

 

[pehawk]

This is how I welcome all of you 49er fans...

[youtube]PJ1i0HuBXPg[/youtube]

 

[rideaducati]

For me, the hatred started after the regular season ended in 2010, prior to that, the niners and their fans were irrelevant. The niner players and fans thought that with their 6-10 record that they "DESERVED" to win the division. Both players and fans of the niners thought their team was going to walk through the division and forgot that the teams actually have to play the games and nothing will be handed to them. Then, AFTER they won the division for the first time in a decade, niner fans came out of the woodwork as if they had been fans all along and they expected EVERYONE to bow down to their greatness. The niner bandwagon is fake and we don't like them because they only come around to dish out and were/are nowhere to be found to take as their niners crash back to Earth.

No obsession for me, just hatred.

 

[hawk45]

Pretty thoughtful post by Popeye, thanks.

That said, I think it's pretty simple, no need to go into armchair psychology for an explanation. As has been pointed out by previous posters, the Niners have been dominant in recent history, they are the number one threat to our team, so I expect the Niner fascination to last for a while even if they aren't able to step up their play in this season and manifest that threat.

If another team rises they'll see more screen time here at .NET. However I don't see the Niners dropping off so much that they're not top of mind for a while to come.

 

[pmedic920]

I don't come here too often, but when I do, it always surprises me how much chatter about the 49ers there is on a Seahawks forum. As of today, in "NFL Nation", there are 14 (!!!) threads about the Niners on the first page alone! It seems like there's a thread or discussion for every little bit of news about our team.

Look, I get that we play in the same division and its impact on playoff rankings and such, and yes, your past 2 wins were deservedly big deals... but why so much irrational hate for a team that in all honesty you don't have any kind of "rivalry" history with? It's not like we've clashed in the playoffs multiple times, or have had epic back-and-forth battles. I really don't think any of us older Niner fans would even consider you guys a rival if the media didn't create it or hype it up so much. Maybe you find that snobby, or insulting, but it's the truth. We currently voted on and are celebrating the "Top 10 Moments of Candlestick Park" each game, as the season progresses, and none of those moments involve the Seahawks. For us, we've had history and bad blood that goes back decades with the Rams, Cowboys, Giants, and Packers. Those are the teams we hate.

So I ask, why are you guys so obsessed with the 49ers that you would have 14 threads on 1 page?

And now there is another. Guess where it came from? You. You started a 9er thread on our forum. The answer to your question really is that simple.

 

[HawkWow]

You should be happy that your 9ers are rapidly becoming a non-topic.

 

[rsm650]

What everyone else said. The 49ers are the team most likely to give us competition for winning the NFC West. If the 49ers didn't have a chance or weren't in our division then every 49er thread would pretty much disappear.

 

[SouthSoundHawk]

Let's start turning them into awesome animal threads.

Starting with this one.

Look at this fluff.

Perfectly groomed.

Looks like it could survive off honey, straight out the hive.

10/10.

 

[fenderbender123]

I don't come here too often, but when I do, it always surprises me how much chatter about the 49ers there is on a Seahawks forum. As of today, in "NFL Nation", there are 14 (!!!) threads about the Niners on the first page alone! It seems like there's a thread or discussion for every little bit of news about our team.

Look, I get that we play in the same division and its impact on playoff rankings and such, and yes, your past 2 wins were deservedly big deals... but why so much irrational hate for a team that in all honesty you don't have any kind of "rivalry" history with? It's not like we've clashed in the playoffs multiple times, or have had epic back-and-forth battles. I really don't think any of us older Niner fans would even consider you guys a rival if the media didn't create it or hype it up so much. Maybe you find that snobby, or insulting, but it's the truth. We currently voted on and are celebrating the "Top 10 Moments of Candlestick Park" each game, as the season progresses, and none of those moments involve the Seahawks. For us, we've had history and bad blood that goes back decades with the Rams, Cowboys, Giants, and Packers. Those are the teams we hate.

So I ask, why are you guys so obsessed with the 49ers that you would have 14 threads on 1 page?

Why are you so obsessed with the Seahawks being obsessed with the 49ers?

 

[-The Glove-]

You should ask your fellow Whiner fans why they're so obsessed with the Seahawks. Chanting "Seahawks suck!" after a game with STL? Makes sense. If we suck, what does that make your team?

 

[jkitsune]

Stumbling over landmines here, so I'll start with some disclaimers:

1) There's obviously a real rivalry, and 9ers fans who claim otherwise (particularly while posting on this board, and even more particularly while making threads claiming otherwise on this board :lol: ) are completely full of it.
2) This is also a rivalry that the Hawks are quite clearly currently winning.
3) Silly stuff happens on every forum, and posters should ideally be judged by the quality of their posting, not by the lowest hanging fruit of their respective fanbases.
4) As a general rule "everyone over there" statements are wrong.
5) Despite my fandom, on balance I greatly prefer this place to the Webzone, which is a hot @ss mess IMO, whereas this place generally isn't.

Okay, with all of that out of the way, here it is:

It's really strange how good of a source this forum is for 49ers news. That's not because 9ers fans are posting 9ers news here. Of all the fan forums I've been to (and I've been to a lot) I've never seen a forum generates as many inane and pointless threads about a rival team. Overall I think the quality of posting here is really high, but the archaeological excavating of any and all things that could possibly be negatively spun about the 9ers or people affiliated with them is really atypical. Sorry, but from what I've seen across many forums I believe this to be true.

I've alluded to this before, but I weakly suspect it's two things (which are not intended to offend):

1) The Hawks are an exceptionally good team, and most likely the best team in the NFL, but they haven't won anything yet. The fanbase is as excited about the team as it has ever been, and deservedly so, but until they win it all with this team (which I expect them to do soon, and which wouldn't surprise a single NFL fan) there's going to be kind of a manic edge to some of that very deserved excitement. This kind of manic-edged excitement is compounded by #2.

2) The Seattle-Sports-Victim-Complex isn't universal, but it's a real thing. A proportion of the fanbase feels overlooked and ignored up there in the corner, and has also grown pretty fatalistic and just assumes that things always go wrong in the end. The Mariners were great through the mid to late 1990s but never won a championship. The Hawks were very good in the 80s and 2000s but never won a championship. The only team from Seattle that ever won a championship was bad, still totally beloved, and completely stolen from you guys only to start almost instantly competing on the national stage in the NBA for reasons completely unrelated to the change of scenery.

These two things are a wild cocktail to mix up. You have near manic excitement mixed in with a victim complex and some degree of fatalism. For some folks, no matter what they do, they just know they've been done worse (the worst of all of course, is having been ignored). Basically I think there's some crazy exhaling going on here, and a lot of the inane and celebratory angry 9ers threads (and the smilie, and the sigs) are just kind of some weird form of "payback" for something that most outsiders never even knew existed in the first place.

In the long run I think the team is friggin awesome though, I think they'll payoff on their awesomeness, and I think this weird sorta quirk of a really good collection of posters and fans will fade away into a more typical level of dislike for one's rival.

Sorry for the long post, and again, not intended to offend.

That's interesting to hear. I don't browse opposing forums all that much, so I'll take your word for it. I think you basically nailed the Seattle sports psyche above, and particularly with the absence of the Sonics and the protracted horror that is the Seattle Mariners (I still love 'em), combined with the recent futility of the Huskies (finally turning it around), we're just accustomed to being kicked in the metaphorical stomach every year. So yeah, I think you're right about the manic tinge of the excitement, but it's a manic tinge that is well-earned through decades of sports torment.

What's interesting to me is how much this forum has changed since I joined in 2003. I don't recall there ever being this much clamor over the Rams between 2003-2005, and the Steelers were the villain of choice (still are, to a great extent) from 2006-2011. It's not until Carroll and Harbaugh came to the NFL that I feel like the Seahawks/Niners thing started to take root up here, even before the Hawks began to improve. Seems like the 'archaeology' you speak of began around the same time. Not sure that's directly related to success, given its relative absence in 2005, or to the media play the Hawks/Niners dichotomy has been getting.

 

[drdiags]

Who knows for sure why folks get such pleasure out of putting down the division rivals from the south? I tend to compartmentalize myself with just the local team. I have spent 34 yrs following this team and I have seen them become relevant a few times but mostly they are the homely person at the party no one has time for. I personally don't see much value in wasting my time and energy poking fun at the other team's QB. Some at one time wanted the Seahawks to draft him, along with Blaine Gabbert, so that shows you how things can change over time.

This is a promise, you will never see me chuckling over some tic-for-tac items that have nothing to do with football. The folks that discuss the merits of the game is what attracted me to this forum after wasting time lurking at the old ESPN back in the early 2000's. That is kind of changing as it seems more of the old ESPN stuff has found its home here. I figure it is just my "get off my lawn" view of things so I just comment on things of interest and skip the repetitive superfan or anti-9ers stuff. Not my cup of tea.

Fans want to feel part of the action and it seems like there are 32 NFL gangs. I thought the Rams would sneak up on the two front runners, whose fans were too busy measuring their junk to notice them, but the hype had no substance and now it is back to the old pissing match. Unless the Cardinals sneak up on them. Nah, that probably isn't going to happen either.

13 more games to go. Then it gets to start all over again next off-season.

 

[razgriz737]

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network-t ... n-business @ 1:10

 

[CallMeADawg]

I don't come here too often, but when I do...

It's after the 49ers manage to win a game.

 

[RolandDeschain]

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network-total-access/0ap2000000251274/Kaepernick-and-Gore-back-in-business @ 1:10

LOL.

49ers beat Rams in St. Louis, and their fans start chanting Seahawks suck after the game.

Gee, you think we're in the minds of the 49ers fan base just a little? Yet some of their fans have the balls to say we're irrelevant to them, they have rivalries going back a few decades to when they were winning Super Bowls. ROFL.

 

[Dtowers]

Who cares let them hate us. We are still going to beat them.

 

[bigtrain21]

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network-total-access/0ap2000000251274/Kaepernick-and-Gore-back-in-business @ 1:10

LOL.

49ers beat Rams in St. Louis, and their fans start chanting Seahawks suck after the game.

Gee, you think we're in the minds of the 49ers fan base just a little? Yet some of their fans have the balls to say we're irrelevant to them, they have rivalries going back a few decades to when they were winning Super Bowls. ROFL.

This is undeniable proof. The Rams are apparently their biggest rival and all they can think about after beating their biggest rival is the Seahawks.

 

[Throwdown]

Me and Popeye are gonna fight, my favorite sports franchise wasn't "bad" the Sonics were a pretty successful franchise up until the last days when Howard Schultz completely ruined the and then sold 'em to a guy who's motives were already known.