Bullmeister
Member
Many people have often asked my why I am so much in to the Seattle Seahawks when I don't even live in Seattle, let alone the USA. Well, I think now I can really explain and show why.
It just so happens that my mum is about to sell the family home and in the last week, my brother and I have been going over and tasked with going through all the old stuff that had been kept and stored away over the 45 years since my mum and dad first bought the house. So much stuff has to be thrown away. It is amazing just how much from our childhood was retained, mainly school work, art and books from mid primary school years right through to even my uni (college) days. It has been quite an experience rekindling childhood memories and emotions as we find all sorts of things that we didn't expect to find.
One of the things I found was the school research project I did in Grade 6 (1981?) that was ultimately responsible for leading me on the way to become a diehard lifelong Seahawk fan despite living 8,186 miles from Seattle. The project was all about the USA, a country that I typically found more interesting than my own, mainly because it had quite a deep military history that I just found fascinating. I was all over the Civil War, Custer and the Indian Wars and WW2, Superman (thanks to lots of movies!) and the cool looking stars n stripes and bald eagle were just awesome to draw.
Here is the manila folder I found that had all that stuff in it:
Anyway, part of the project required me to pick a US city to research and write about. I do remember looking all over a map of the USA trying to find something that connected with me. I was hoping to find a city/state that was at least similar to my own. When I found and read about Washington State and it's city of Seattle tucked away in the NW corner, it just seemed to be the place I was looking for. From it being a coastal 'green' cultured city with a bay/port, to it being surrounded by with beautiful mountains and lush green trees (my state is called the Garden State), to the fact that it was an otherwise overlooked, new and unique US city, seemingly isolated from the rest of the USA and all the bad stuff associated with the bigger cities, it just felt like the kind of place in the USA I would want to live in. When I found out about Seattle's reputation for rainy weather (a reputation shared by my own city of Melbourne) it felt like I had found a sister city to my own and Seattle, Washington State and all things Pacific Northwest became my handpicked US city of choice and it stuck with me my entire life.
I have actually scanned those pages I wrote about Seattle. It is quite funny reading it back now. It would have been the first time I would have written the word "Seattle Seahawks" (its on the third page).
Seattle school assignment: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/Seattle school assignment 1981.pdf
I didn't know much else about the Seahawks then (or American football/NFL for that matter) but was familiar with what American football was. I remember being fascinated by this exotic sport that I only sometimes saw glimpses of on TV. The helmets and padding and uniforms, the hard hits and excitement and very different rules. It all kind of reminded me of some kind of war, like battling Roman gladiators fighting it out in Colosseums (yes I was also in to Roman history back then!)
It would have been within a year of doing that project that I remember being with my family at some friends of theirs party, very late at night, the TV was switched on for the kids and they just happened to be showing what was a full game of American football on the TV. I was stoked! It was the first time I actually had a chance to watch an actual game. To my amazement, it actually was Seattle that was playing, a Monday night game I think it was at home to the LA Raiders! I remember seeing the uniforms, logo and stadium for the first time and just thinking wow! That's so cool, and the blue, green, silver/grey colours were exactly what I would have expected them to be. It all fell in to place for me. This is when I actually realised just how much I liked American football and the Seattle Seahawks. What followed were many years relying on the local TV sports shows to feed my interest in the NFL and the Seahawks. It was like being in a desert at times, devoid of any information, sometimes just seeing 30 sec sports clips of generic NFL action maybe once every month. Yes kids there was no internet back then! However, my interest never wavered.
Eventually in 1991 Australia did get a regular TV show dedicated to covering the NFL. It was hosted by an ex-pat New Yorker who already was already big in Australia for having his own popular late night variety show here. When it first started, it was on very late at night on Thursdays and showed one game from the week before and highlights of all the others. This now became my main source of NFL/Seahawk information. I used to VHS record all the highlights packages just so I could rewind and re-watch all the Seahawks highlights in detail. I would slowmo/pause the highlights and try to record every jersey number/name I saw, lol! I was also buying the season preview editions of Lindy's Football Digest and Pro Football Weekly magazines from the newsagents. Throughout the season, I would visit the state library where they held copies of the NY Times, USA Today and the LA Times and photocopy/read the NFL sports pages and box scores. I had just bought my first computer back then and used Microsoft Word to record and document all I could about what I knew about the Seahawks each week of each season I thought I had lost those files for good but sifting through the stuff at my mums I actually found a 3 1/2'' floppy disk labelled 'NFL stuff'. Amazingly enough, by brother still has a PC with a 3 1/2'' floppy disk drive and I was able to copy the data on to a memory stick.
Had some troubles opening them, but have now saved them as PDFs. Check them out! The "Game Summary" sections for each week are all my own words based on the TV highlights and the sports paper scoring summaries (I member at the time fancying myself as a bit of a sports journalist).
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/92SEASON.pdf
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/93SEASON.pdf
Still not satisfied with the news I was able to get on the Seahawks and after seeing an advert in Pro Football Weekly Preview '93 for subscriptions to "Seahawks Insider" magazine, frustration drove me to actually write (yes, via snail mail!) to them and ask if I could subscribe (despite being in Australia). They did actually reply and sent me a bunch of stuff in a padded envelope. I sent a second letter later in the year (including a cheque for US$5 to cover expenses!) and they once again sent some stuff.
Well those letters were also on the diskette and in the junk at the house and I found the padded envelope and all the stuff they sent me still in it.
Here they are for your amusement! (LOL my comments re Rick Mirer!)
First Letter: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/INSDSHWK.pdf
Second Letter: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/SHWKLTR2.pdf
Here is what they sent me. The player cards were just ones I had collected over the years and had placed in the envelope with the rest of the stuff. Note I have 2 HFer Cortez Kennedy cards!
PS: If anyone is interested in collecting any of this stuff let me know. It's all pretty much mint condition and I am happy to give it away.
Around that time, I remember learning about something called the internet and Newsgroups. When I found out about the alt.sports.football.pro.sea-seahawks newsgroup it then became my home for getting all the latest news on the Seahawks (if anyone remembers those days, I was Lt. Bull).
Once the interwebs finally grew up and http://www.nfl.com and http://www.seahawks.com appeared, then http://www.seahawks.net, following the Seahawks from +8000 miles away became a totally new experience.
In 2005 I was fortunate enough to finally get to Seattle and watch two amazing home Seahawks games (vs Titans and Cowboys). Incredibly, not only did I get to witness what ended up being the first Superbowl bound Seahawk team actually play, I even met a bunch of players and a Seagal after the Cowboys game at the Kirkland pub with everyone just having a ball late in to the night, down the road from where I was staying. Marcus Tubbbs was spinning tunes, i was high-fiving Jurevicius, Urban, Kacyvenski, Tafoya and Josh Brown. One of the most surreal experiences was pushing my way through to the bar only to find myself standing right next to HFer Warren Moon who was ordering drinks himself, chatting to Shelley the Seagal! Some 13 years earlier I was typing out his name and stats for Week 10 vs Seattle in my 1993 Seahawks doc file! (don't ask about photos, some ###hole that night stole my backpack and all the stuff I had in it, incl camera/photos, Seahawks gear).
PS: Just remembered, something quite freaky considering how things turned out, I did actually go the a Huskies game as well at Huskies Stadium. Huskies got whipped, And who did they play? USC. I believe the head coach of that team ended up back in Seattle.
So here I am now, some 33 years after first writing the words "Seattle Seahawks", on the eve of this teams greatest game ever, wondering if their time has finally come. Will the Seahawks be finally able to lay claim to the title of being the greatest team in the NFL?
Just having to sift through all these things and memories at the old home that have been kept all these years, knowing they just can not be held on to any more, feels like a chapter on the past is well and truly closing, like the end of some rite of passage. The fact that I found and salvaged all this stuff on the eve of SB XXLVIII and was able to share with you some of the history of how I became a Seahawk 12 has a feeling of things coming full circle for me as a Seahawks fan, like some kind of closure. It wasn't easy being a Seahawks fan through those years, but now I feels like it finally is paytime for the Seahawks and all the 12s, like a new fresh era is about to begin...
Won't be the only Aussie taking time off work to watch the big game tomorrow!
Go Hawks! :icon_new:
Bull
It just so happens that my mum is about to sell the family home and in the last week, my brother and I have been going over and tasked with going through all the old stuff that had been kept and stored away over the 45 years since my mum and dad first bought the house. So much stuff has to be thrown away. It is amazing just how much from our childhood was retained, mainly school work, art and books from mid primary school years right through to even my uni (college) days. It has been quite an experience rekindling childhood memories and emotions as we find all sorts of things that we didn't expect to find.
One of the things I found was the school research project I did in Grade 6 (1981?) that was ultimately responsible for leading me on the way to become a diehard lifelong Seahawk fan despite living 8,186 miles from Seattle. The project was all about the USA, a country that I typically found more interesting than my own, mainly because it had quite a deep military history that I just found fascinating. I was all over the Civil War, Custer and the Indian Wars and WW2, Superman (thanks to lots of movies!) and the cool looking stars n stripes and bald eagle were just awesome to draw.
Here is the manila folder I found that had all that stuff in it:
Anyway, part of the project required me to pick a US city to research and write about. I do remember looking all over a map of the USA trying to find something that connected with me. I was hoping to find a city/state that was at least similar to my own. When I found and read about Washington State and it's city of Seattle tucked away in the NW corner, it just seemed to be the place I was looking for. From it being a coastal 'green' cultured city with a bay/port, to it being surrounded by with beautiful mountains and lush green trees (my state is called the Garden State), to the fact that it was an otherwise overlooked, new and unique US city, seemingly isolated from the rest of the USA and all the bad stuff associated with the bigger cities, it just felt like the kind of place in the USA I would want to live in. When I found out about Seattle's reputation for rainy weather (a reputation shared by my own city of Melbourne) it felt like I had found a sister city to my own and Seattle, Washington State and all things Pacific Northwest became my handpicked US city of choice and it stuck with me my entire life.
I have actually scanned those pages I wrote about Seattle. It is quite funny reading it back now. It would have been the first time I would have written the word "Seattle Seahawks" (its on the third page).
Seattle school assignment: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/Seattle school assignment 1981.pdf
I didn't know much else about the Seahawks then (or American football/NFL for that matter) but was familiar with what American football was. I remember being fascinated by this exotic sport that I only sometimes saw glimpses of on TV. The helmets and padding and uniforms, the hard hits and excitement and very different rules. It all kind of reminded me of some kind of war, like battling Roman gladiators fighting it out in Colosseums (yes I was also in to Roman history back then!)
It would have been within a year of doing that project that I remember being with my family at some friends of theirs party, very late at night, the TV was switched on for the kids and they just happened to be showing what was a full game of American football on the TV. I was stoked! It was the first time I actually had a chance to watch an actual game. To my amazement, it actually was Seattle that was playing, a Monday night game I think it was at home to the LA Raiders! I remember seeing the uniforms, logo and stadium for the first time and just thinking wow! That's so cool, and the blue, green, silver/grey colours were exactly what I would have expected them to be. It all fell in to place for me. This is when I actually realised just how much I liked American football and the Seattle Seahawks. What followed were many years relying on the local TV sports shows to feed my interest in the NFL and the Seahawks. It was like being in a desert at times, devoid of any information, sometimes just seeing 30 sec sports clips of generic NFL action maybe once every month. Yes kids there was no internet back then! However, my interest never wavered.
Eventually in 1991 Australia did get a regular TV show dedicated to covering the NFL. It was hosted by an ex-pat New Yorker who already was already big in Australia for having his own popular late night variety show here. When it first started, it was on very late at night on Thursdays and showed one game from the week before and highlights of all the others. This now became my main source of NFL/Seahawk information. I used to VHS record all the highlights packages just so I could rewind and re-watch all the Seahawks highlights in detail. I would slowmo/pause the highlights and try to record every jersey number/name I saw, lol! I was also buying the season preview editions of Lindy's Football Digest and Pro Football Weekly magazines from the newsagents. Throughout the season, I would visit the state library where they held copies of the NY Times, USA Today and the LA Times and photocopy/read the NFL sports pages and box scores. I had just bought my first computer back then and used Microsoft Word to record and document all I could about what I knew about the Seahawks each week of each season I thought I had lost those files for good but sifting through the stuff at my mums I actually found a 3 1/2'' floppy disk labelled 'NFL stuff'. Amazingly enough, by brother still has a PC with a 3 1/2'' floppy disk drive and I was able to copy the data on to a memory stick.
Had some troubles opening them, but have now saved them as PDFs. Check them out! The "Game Summary" sections for each week are all my own words based on the TV highlights and the sports paper scoring summaries (I member at the time fancying myself as a bit of a sports journalist).
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/92SEASON.pdf
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/93SEASON.pdf
Still not satisfied with the news I was able to get on the Seahawks and after seeing an advert in Pro Football Weekly Preview '93 for subscriptions to "Seahawks Insider" magazine, frustration drove me to actually write (yes, via snail mail!) to them and ask if I could subscribe (despite being in Australia). They did actually reply and sent me a bunch of stuff in a padded envelope. I sent a second letter later in the year (including a cheque for US$5 to cover expenses!) and they once again sent some stuff.
Well those letters were also on the diskette and in the junk at the house and I found the padded envelope and all the stuff they sent me still in it.
Here they are for your amusement! (LOL my comments re Rick Mirer!)
First Letter: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/INSDSHWK.pdf
Second Letter: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29791447/SHWKLTR2.pdf
Here is what they sent me. The player cards were just ones I had collected over the years and had placed in the envelope with the rest of the stuff. Note I have 2 HFer Cortez Kennedy cards!
PS: If anyone is interested in collecting any of this stuff let me know. It's all pretty much mint condition and I am happy to give it away.
Around that time, I remember learning about something called the internet and Newsgroups. When I found out about the alt.sports.football.pro.sea-seahawks newsgroup it then became my home for getting all the latest news on the Seahawks (if anyone remembers those days, I was Lt. Bull).
Once the interwebs finally grew up and http://www.nfl.com and http://www.seahawks.com appeared, then http://www.seahawks.net, following the Seahawks from +8000 miles away became a totally new experience.
In 2005 I was fortunate enough to finally get to Seattle and watch two amazing home Seahawks games (vs Titans and Cowboys). Incredibly, not only did I get to witness what ended up being the first Superbowl bound Seahawk team actually play, I even met a bunch of players and a Seagal after the Cowboys game at the Kirkland pub with everyone just having a ball late in to the night, down the road from where I was staying. Marcus Tubbbs was spinning tunes, i was high-fiving Jurevicius, Urban, Kacyvenski, Tafoya and Josh Brown. One of the most surreal experiences was pushing my way through to the bar only to find myself standing right next to HFer Warren Moon who was ordering drinks himself, chatting to Shelley the Seagal! Some 13 years earlier I was typing out his name and stats for Week 10 vs Seattle in my 1993 Seahawks doc file! (don't ask about photos, some ###hole that night stole my backpack and all the stuff I had in it, incl camera/photos, Seahawks gear).
PS: Just remembered, something quite freaky considering how things turned out, I did actually go the a Huskies game as well at Huskies Stadium. Huskies got whipped, And who did they play? USC. I believe the head coach of that team ended up back in Seattle.
So here I am now, some 33 years after first writing the words "Seattle Seahawks", on the eve of this teams greatest game ever, wondering if their time has finally come. Will the Seahawks be finally able to lay claim to the title of being the greatest team in the NFL?
Just having to sift through all these things and memories at the old home that have been kept all these years, knowing they just can not be held on to any more, feels like a chapter on the past is well and truly closing, like the end of some rite of passage. The fact that I found and salvaged all this stuff on the eve of SB XXLVIII and was able to share with you some of the history of how I became a Seahawk 12 has a feeling of things coming full circle for me as a Seahawks fan, like some kind of closure. It wasn't easy being a Seahawks fan through those years, but now I feels like it finally is paytime for the Seahawks and all the 12s, like a new fresh era is about to begin...
Won't be the only Aussie taking time off work to watch the big game tomorrow!
Go Hawks! :icon_new:
Bull
