The Super Bowl XLIX will pit the Seattle Seahawks against the New England Cheaters. Oh, I’m sorry—I meant to say the New England Patriots. In the past week, head coach Bill Beli-cheat and the Pats have denied, on multiple occasions, altering footballs in the American Football Conference Championship game.
He and quarterback Tom Brady have had several awkward press conferences discussing how they knew nothing about deflated footballs. Compare that with the Seahawks, a team that somehow pulled off the most miraculous comeback I have ever seen. There was the onside kick and the Green Bay Packers field goal to push it to overtime––the resulting Seahawks’ touchdown drive to win the game was the most exciting sequence of football that I may have ever seen. That game reminded me why I love to watch football. For all of the bad that the Patriots are going to bring to the Super Bowl, the Seahawks are bringing all of the momentum they had with them at the end of that National Football Conference Championship game.
In the past, the antics of cornerback Richard Sherman and running back Marshawn Lynch pushed me the wrong way. I thought the way they conducted themselves on and off the field was disrespectful to the game. Upon actually sitting down and watching the Seahawks play some games this season, however, my opinion changed.
Sherman appears to be a bit antagonistic—and maybe he is—but he’s just a big goofball who wants to win. The same thing can be said about Lynch. He doesn’t talk to reporters after the games because he wants his play on the field to speak for itself. If you can’t figure out what was happening when he busted through seven tacklers, then that’s on you, not him.
The Seahawks’ “I dare you to beat us” attitude on the field comes from a place of winning. They have already proven that they are a force to be reckoned with, and they put up one hell of a fight to show it. On the other hand, the Patriots may have won in the past but haven’t done it at all on the biggest stage in the past 10 years. Brady and Belichick haven’t won a Super Bowl in years and haven’t done anything but make people suspicious of their activities.
With Spygate and now Deflategate, it’s hard to not root for the Seahawks. I’m not saying that the Patriots aren’t a good team––they are. But their apparent need to alter the game balls when they were in such a commanding position in the game just leads one to think that the team is made up of a bunch of jerks who are to afraid to lose. It isn’t very hard to root against a team like that.
The Seahawks are currently 2.5-point favorites but that may change by game time on Sunday Feb. 1. But they also have a big thing going for them off field: the idea that a large segment of America will be cheering for them. If they don’t allow that to go to their heads, I think that they have a real good chance of holding on, rushing past the Patriots and hoisting their second consecutive Lombardi Trophy.