Couple of news items that really bugged me over the last few days…

Item: Home Depot announced that it was closing down 15 locations and shelving plans for 50 more that were to be built. This, I understand, is the first time they’ve ever had to close a store and not open a new one nearby. Home Depot is having trouble due to the shaky economic conditions…folks don’t do home improvements when they practically have to take out a loan to buy gas. Now, to me, being the simplistic pragmatist that I am, this news sounds bad if I’m an investor in Home Depot. Things aren’t going good when you have to shrink your business. However, apparently, the investment community disagrees with me. Home Depot’s shares went up 5% on the announcement. Why? Well, they were going to be cutting jobs, which Wall Street loves to hear. Is it me, or is that sort of bas-ackwards? Whatever happened to new of success causing a stock to rise and news of failure causing a stock to fall? We’re banking on failure, folks…and I think that’s a shame.

Item: U. S. Senator Arlen Specter (R-Heinz Field in Pittsburgh) has decided that he’s not satisfied with the National Football League’s investigation and punishment of the New England Patriots in the “Spygate” scandal. “Spygate” involved the Patriots taping signals from coaches of opposing teams to their players on the field…a no-no by league rule as well as being, well, unsporting. The NFL whacked the Patriots for doing this. Specter, a fan of a Patriots’ rival, the Pittsburgh Steelers, thinks that fining the Patriots coach $500K, the team $250K, and taking their first pick away in the last college player draft just isn’t good enough for him, and is calling for an investigation. Look, I don’t know whether the punishment was enough or not…but hey, Arlen, how about a little investigation of how the oil companies are killing the economy with $4 a gallon gas while scoring record profits? If I hear one more story about Congress investigating a sports issue (and the other proposed investigations are into the college football bowl system and the steroids problem in Major League Baseball) I am going to write in Terry Bradshaw for every office I vote for until he wins something, which will never happen, since Terry is smarter than most politicians anyway. It makes me cringe to think that we’re guaranteed that a sitting Senator will be our next President. :::sigh:::

So I had the whole scenario spun out in my head…how the Seahawks could become the most hated pro football team in the world.

First, we’d beat the poor Washington Redskins, mourning their fallen player, Sean Taylor and worshiping their aging coach, Joe Gibbs. Mission Accomplished there. Then, we would beat Our Lord Favre on his home turf and send him back to Mississippi wondering if he shouldn’t have retired. Then, we’d beat America’s Team, Dallas, with America’s Hunk Tony Romo at QB and America’s Semi-Sleazy Girlfriend Jessica Simpson on his arm. Then, we’d go to the Superbowl, and beat the Patriots, spoiling the dream season of the team and America’s Other QB, Tom Brady. It would have been glorious.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way…the Hawks blew a 14 point lead in a blizzard in Green Bay, and they’re out. Other than the first 5 minutes, when we scored twice on fumbles, we never seemed to be in it. The game became very painful with every Favre completion and every failure, on both sides of the ball…plenty of blame to go around. Honestly, Green Bay seriously wanted it more and it showed. The game was painful to watch and sort of too painful to talk about much, moreso since the Cowboys lost to the Giants, meaning if the Blue Men had won, we’d get the Conference Championship at Qwest.

Nope.

So another year ends with no trophy. The Seahawks have a lot to address in the off season, seems to me. On offense, they have to figure out the running game, and the tight end position. If it were me, I’m sad to say, I would either trade Shaun Alexander for a tight end or something (not bloody likely, his salary’s too big) or cut him, because I think he’s done, and draft a running back. We ought to pick up a good offensive lineman, probably a guard. Deion Branch has been hurt so much, his future is cloudy, he may be done, but we’re pretty deep at WR. On defense, Marcus Trufant is a free agent, and we’d better spend the bucks to keep him. Josh Brown is too…ditto, even though he’s “just a kicker”…just a kicker that saved the team’s collective butts last year. We need another defensive tackle, one not so injury prone.

Then there’s Coach Mike Holmgren, who has spent the last two weeks talking about maybe retiring…as he’s done the last couple of years. I want to believe he’ll want one more run at it…but I’m not so sure. He’s a great coach, probably in the Hall of Fame…and while I really think his offensive play calling is sometimes stubbornly unimaginative…I hope he comes back.

Another wait till next year off season approaches. I fear now New England has nothing to stop them from their perfect season.

Sigh.

Since Jeri already gave the game experience from this past weekend’s playoff game, there’s no need for me to convey the emotion part, she got it just right, so I can be brief in my analysis.

Awesome.

I admit, I was worried going into this one. The opening line on the game with the oddsmakers was 4 1/2 to 5 in favor of the Hawks, and went down to 3. That’s a serious move, and means the serious gambling money was headed to the Redskins side of the ledger.

No matter. Other than for about a quarter, the Blue Men played awesomely well. Matt didn’t have a great game, just good enough to let the Defense keep us more than in it, and win it. The Redskins offense was shut down for a good part of the game, and Todd Collins, the backup QB that had been making such a name for himself after not having played for like 10 years…showed why he hadn’t played for 10 years. Our man Marcus Trufant, in his last contract year, is going to make so much freaking money next year whereever he lands, I just hope he stays here at home…another great game, and a returned INT for a TD.

So on to the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field to play Our Lord Favre and the Packers. Supposed to be cold and ugly. No matter…this time Matt IS going get the ball, and he’s going to score.

Today, I yelled and screamed and carried on like an idiot… but I was in good company!

I went to the Seahawks’ NFC wild card playoff game with Bryan. He has a pair of season tickets, fabulous seats about 20 rows above the field on the 10 yard line, right above the Seahawks’ grand entry tunnel. He usually takes his dad or a friend – but today I got to go. It was a total blast, and the Seahawks won handily.

Did anybody see “Fever Pitch”, where Jimmy Fallon says his baseball seatmates are like family? Well, it’s not quite like that, but the season ticket holders around him do get very friendly, know everyone’s name and ask where he’s been if he misses a game.

Qwest Field is notorious for being one of the noisiest stadiums in the NFL. The rumor periodically circulates that the team pumps additional noise in to make it more deafening – but investigations have shown they do not. It’s just 70,000 crazed, rowdy, well-lubricated fans yelling their heads off. The noise level really makes the opposing teams frustrated – they can’t hear the plays in the huddle, nor the signals from the quarterback on the line. Delay-of-game and false start calls are frequent.

Today was one of those awesome games where everything went our way, even the rain stopped for the duration of the game, and nobody in the stadium even sat down for more than a minute or two. (I don’t know why we all spend so much money on seats.) After each big play and improbable score, perfect strangers were hugging each other in the aisles, high-fiving each other across the rows and the generations.

I haven’t gone to many of the Seahawks games, maybe only two a season. I usually defer, because I’m not much of a football fan compared to the men in my family. (OK, my son Zach is even worse, he finds the sport “boring” as only a supercilious teen can.) But you know what? Every time I go I have a great time – and I surprise myself with how much I know about the game and the players. Sometimes I even notice one I’ve never paid attention to before – like Patrick Kerney, above.)

I think I’m going to go to a whole lot more games in the future.

He was not a player I knew much about before his death, but the story of Sean Taylor, a Washington Redskins defensive back, has moved me.

For those of you that don’t know, Taylor was a great young player, and was at one time leading the NFC in interceptions when he got hurt. He’d asked to spend some of the time while injured recovering at home, because someone had broken into his house about a week before. While Taylor was then at home, a burglar broke in and shot the young player in the leg, severing an artery. He died the next morning, at 24, leaving a girlfriend and baby daughter, who were in the home during the attack but not physically hurt by the thief turned killer. The killer and his cohorts were caught, and presumably will work their way through the justice system to some result that won’t bring Sean Taylor back to life.

I’ll admit when I first heard about this, I figured it was a gang killing thing. After all, Taylor went to the University of Miami, a football program troubled by violence and vice of all kinds in the past. Even some of Taylor’s Miami alum friends said they thought the same. I’ll admit, I, and many others, were buying into the stereotypes hook, line and sinker.

Then the story started coming out clearer. Taylor did have problems in the past, but by all accounts had settled down into being a respectable citizen. The break-in was just that, a robbery gone wrong, making the story even more tragic.

The Redskins then did a very cool and classy thing during their next game. On their first play on defense, they didn’t field a safety in Taylor’s place, playing with 10 guys. When I saw in a highlight that they had done that, it really choked me up. Normally, when a player dies, the team has a sticker on their helmet, or something along those lines…but this was a physical presence reminder of the loss to the team, on the field, almost like a “missing man” formation on a military jet flyby. I’d never heard of such a thing.

Then the league had every team put a “21” – Taylor’s number – on every players helmet. They were still on the helmets this week, I noticed, a couple of weeks after this all went down. Also very classy and cool.

Then finally the players, fans and coaches made Taylor a starter on the Pro Bowl team, just announced today. When I saw that, it again moved me.

In an age where striking players, drug and violence scandals, and so many negatives dot the sports landscape, this is a story of note for both its tragedy, and nobility in response. Football is a game of high emotion tempered by discipline and molded by skill. It’s nice to see those involved willing to set aside competitive drive for long enough to recognize that there’s more than the game, and sometimes terrible things happen to those who deserve better.