Long time lurker, first time poster...
I was at the game so I thought I'd add my .02 from my experience...
I was with a small group of friends staying at someone's townhouse we rented for Super Bowl week. The location was great; within walking distance to the stadium and downtown.
Yes, the city was crawling with Steeler fans...but we had a good time with it. For two straight nights we posted up at some circus tent-like structure in what I'm guessing was an empty parking lot. But inside at night the drinks were flowing, there was live music, a decent mix of fans from both sides...mostly Steeler fans but everybody was cool & happy to be in the mix. Met some nice people and had some good conversations.
The night before the super bowl on our way back to our place after partying all night (probably 2am-ish), we come across two young guys in Bengals gear. We strike up a conversation..."Bengals? What are you doing here?" They said they just wanted to experience the super bowl vibe and road tripped from Cincinnati since it wasn't too far. Plus they hated the Steelers so much they wanted to represent their team and adopted the Seahawks for the day. They had no game tickets and no place to stay; just came in town to have a good time. We loved them right away and took them in, offered up what space we had. We set them up with a warm place to stay and fed them a nice pre-game breakfast in the morning.
On our walk to the stadium on game day we saw a big tour bus roll into a parking lot and out poured a bus load of Hawk fans. Not only that, but they passed out a Hawk version of the terrible towel (Green Hawk towels) and some other Hawk swag. It was awesome. My small posse joined up with this larger army of hawk fans and we marched down the street together into the stadium area. I thought, "this is awesome! We have this huge hawk mob marching into the city, we'll show them that Seattle is ready!" I was pumped.
And then we crossed into the city area near the stadium and, I kid you not, it was like the parting of the seas as our mob came into the mix. The streets were closed off so there were people everywhere and our army of Hawk fans cut through like a knife. People were chanting, yelling, puffing their chests out...it was like a fighter entrance in a big time fight. It was awesome.
And then I heard it.
The BOO's. The yelling, the screaming...at US!
The crowd that had parted had now grown to the equivalent of the population of a small rural town circled around us booing and giving us the business. I swear I saw a pitchfork and a torch in there.
This is when I first realized we were severely outnumbered. No matter, we had fun with it.
Inside the stadium, however, is when it got real. The stadium employees were handing out terrible towels. "where are the hawk towels?" None. They were walking up the aisles with boxes of yellow towels. It was obnoxious.
The stadium was 80/10/10...80% Steeler fans, 10% hawk fans, 10% "I'm just here." Luckily, our section was in/around a lot of Hawk fans, so we had a nice corner of the stadium surrounded by a good number of our kind. Still, I'll never forget pregame when the stadium PA announcer is getting the fans into into it and when it was Pittsburgh's turn, the whole place turned into a yellow sea of waving towels. I will say it was visually impressive to see that kind of energy even though it was for the other guys.
Team intros were on another level for the other guys. So many towels. I'll never hear that intro song again and not think of the Steelers (ugh). The hawks intro was special, though, because it was our first Super Bowl intro. I shed a tear or two.
(I have video of both intros but file is too big to upload and I can't figure it out...but the difference is staggering)
Anyhow, The ball kicks off and we all know the rest of the story. I will say, though, that our section and side of the stadium was loud. In fact, louder than Steeler fans at some points. There's one of those super bowl shows on this game that has a Steeler player mic'ed up on the sideline saying how loud it was at that end of the stadium. We were small in numbers, but our voices were heard.
A lot of crap factors did the Hawks in that game (bad calls were part of it, fluky plays, and the Hawks killed themselves with dropped balls, poor clock management, etc). Towards the end of the game I locked eyes with a couple Steeler fans in front of me and I said, "At least tell me you earned it. Can you tell me you earned it?" They just turned around and said nothing. I've been to four Super bowls in my life and I have never seen such a 'meh' vibe from the winning teams' fans. They knew.