I've told these things many times before around here, but I'll repeat them here.
I grew up in Maine. I'm the same age as
@AROS, so I was six in 1975, when my neighbors taught me to play football. The town police chief lived up near the end of our street, and his youngest son Chuck, three years older than I, gave me his old "Pat Patriot" helmet and his old shoulder pads to use. My first "jersey" was a plain white T-shirt that I think must have been my dad's, so the shoulder pads would fit under it. Because I was playing football and understanding more about the rules, I started watching more football with my dad that year.
I have no idea why aa preseason game involving an expansion team from all the way across the continent would have been on TV in Maine in 1976. I've checked and the Seahawks did
not play the Patriots in the 1976 preseason. So what I think is that my dad was probably watching highlights from preseason games. I wish he were around so I could ask him. All I know is that I looked at the TV, saw uniforms and helmets I'd never seen before and asked my dad who that team was. He told me it was a new team that would be joining the NFL that season, and it was called the Seattle Seahawks. I decided on the spot that they were my team. My dad thought it was really cool that I had a team and that I had chosen it on my own. During that first season, I remember him telling me about Seahawks highlights he'd seen, or other Seahawks-related news he had heard. I also remember him telling me that two wins was a really good result for a new team in its first season. Over the years, he would always report Seahawks-related news to me. I remember phone conversations when I was in college that included my dad saying "oh, and Largent got his catch" - that was during Largent's consecutive-games-with-a-catch streak.
That was my first season really following the NFL, paying attention to standings, tracking individual players' performance (as reported in newspaper box scores and stats) and trying to understand what different teams' strengths and weaknesses were. I think it was also my first season participating in the football pool at my dad's workplace. Dad starting bringing home
two copies of the copied handwritten sheet. The top 80% had a list of Sunday games, and we had to pick a winner in each of those. Then for the
MNF game, we had to pick a winner and a score (or maybe it was just adding both teams' points scored in the game to get a total-points-scored number). The bottom 20% of the sheet was a receipt for your entry. I think some of the info about your Monday-night pick was repeated there, too, but I just can't recall clearly. I participated for several years, but the last time was about 40 years ago. Anyway, I'd write my name and fill in my picks, and my dad would take my entry back to work with him, pay for the entry along with his own, and then bring the "receipt" for mine back to me. The football pool was something that got me following the standings more, because when I didn't know anything about a team, I could look at its W-L record and at least have something to guide me in a pick.
So anyway, my first season as a Seahawks fan was also my first season really following the NFL. For almost all of the time since then, I've been the only Seahawks fan I knew. Still, in all those years, I never wavered. Just about everyone else around me was a Patriots fan when I was a kid. As a kid and especially as an adolescent, I let peer pressure, even
imagined peer pressure, influence me in a lot of ways, but not in my choice of a football team.
Even though I was small for my age, and playing with older kids, making me tiny, I was still usually the quarterback on offense (no fixed position on defense, though) in neighborhood football games, and that was because I could throw the ball better than everyone else. And that was because of the countless hours my dad spent throwing the ball with me on our front lawn. There was a little explicit instruction. I have vague memories of him teaching me the principles of throwing a spiral, and slightly clearer memories of him telling me about leading the receiver, "throw[ing] to where the receiver is going to be, not where he is." But much more than explicit instruction, it was just a lot of reps. He even ran around a lot to give me reps leading receivers.
Anyway, because I was a quarterback, the Seahawks were my team, and Zorn was the Seahawks' quarterback, I naturally identified with him, and he became my first childhood sports hero. My dad took me down to Foxborough to see the Seahawks twice: in September of 1984 and September of '86. The result of the '86 game was better, but the '84 game was one of the greatest days of my sports-fan life. Zorn was Krieg's backup by that time, but he was there. After the game, my dad and I waited near the team buses so I could ask for autographs. Among others, I got another Largent autograph and another Zorn autograph, but even better, I got to tell Zorn to his face that I had had his autographed picture framed on my wall in Kennebunk, Maine for years. I can't for the life of me remember exactly what he said, but I can picture his expression perfectly, and I remember the enthusiasm with which he said whatever it was (something along the lines of "well, all right!").
