Denver vs. Seattle

The only two cities in America where pot is legal are going to meet in the Super Bowl. And there’s another storyline, too: Peyton Manning, soon to be 38, versus Russell Wilson, who just turned 25. The old guard versus the new guard. The legend versus the upstart. The 6’5″ veteran versus the 5’11” starry-eyed kid.

“You know, I want to be like him one day,” says Wilson of Manning. “His mind is just so strong and that’s where I’m trying to get there one day.”

I’ve lived in Seattle 36 years, almost from the beginning of the Seahawks, and I can tell you, for a metropolitan area that hosts some pretty big and successful corporations, including Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, the biggest Boeing factory in the world – a pretty impressive club of billionaires, we’ve nursed a lingering inferiority when it comes to sports.

We have exactly three national titles: the WNBA Seattle Storm won in 2004 and 2010, and the Seattle Sonics won the NBA title in 1979. That’s it. Made it to the Super Bowl exactly once before and lost. Made it to the World Series exactly never. The Championship NBA team moved to Oklahoma.

That, I think, is why Seahawks fans keep setting noise records. We’re stuck way out here, the last stop before Japan, with nothing to do but rattle off complex latte orders, read our Kindles, and hope that some time between now and June the fog will lift enough that we can see the top of the Space Needle.

That’s why we legalized pot. It’s called January.

We want to be noticed and if possible, feared.
It’s all in the hands of this 25-year-old kid who everybody says is too short to be a quarterback.

“It’s something my dad used to tell me. He’d say, ‘Russell, why not you?’ And so I kind of translated that to, ‘Why not us?'”

That’s what we’re saying! Why not us?! … in the name of all that is holy.

And we’re glad this thing is being held in New Jersey because if this kid pulls it off, never mind closing down a ramp, we’re taking the whole bridge.

Listen to Dave Ross’ commentary to hear a brand new song, “Beauty of the Beast.”