The post-football season blues: What will you do on Sundays?
Feb 2, 2015, 6:32 PM | Updated: Oct 11, 2024, 10:18 am
Amanda Reid with Richard Sherman's mom, Beverly. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Reid)
(Photo courtesy of Amanda Reid)
Football season is over. Done. Even if the Seahawks had won the Super Bowl, and you didn’t call in sad to work Monday, football season still would have been over and that’s not an easy pill for die-hard fans to swallow.
“It is a huge let down,” says Seattle Seahawks fan Amanda Reid. “Last year it was like this big high of winning the Super Bowl and then going to the parade and having all this emotion and all of this attention. And then you’re like, nothing. You’re just kinda like, what do I do now?”
It’s the post-season blues. It will happen when you’re used to spending every Sunday, and the occasional Monday, on the couch or at a bar, rooting for a team you’ve been 100 percent invested in.
“I mean, as much as I love my wife, I think the Seahawks are right up there,” says Seahawks super fan Joel George. “I had a dream, it was like two nights ago, and I hardly ever remember my dreams. But this dream was very vivid. It was that we were holding up the second Lombardi that we won again.”
He’s obviously not the next Nostradamus but he did find a way to cope last year.
“As a way to overcome the blues and the sadness of not having football anymore, I bought the championship DVD that came out. There was also the divisional and the Super Bowl DVD that came out. It was Super Bowl Sunday every week, for like three or four months,” says Joel. “My wife started getting really mad at me because I would wear my jersey and she’s like, ‘We know we won, you guys can do something else on a Sunday!’ And I’m like, ‘No, we can’t.’ It really helped fill the void, but if your team doesn’t win, there’s nothing that you can do.”
Andy Hurst from Seattle also re-watched last year’s Super Bowl several times. He’s here to tell Joel: It gets better.
“For the first couple weeks it’s really weird. I wake up on Sunday and my instinct is to roll out of bed and flip on the TV and start watching some football. So for the first couple weeks I really don’t know what to do with myself,” says Andy. “But eventually you get used to it, like you get used to anything. Then you just start to live your normal weekend. Then, when football comes back around you’re like, man, how did I live without this? But at first, it’s pretty hard. It’s very sad.”
Amanda says she even has a tough time coping during the season.
“A couple weeks ago we didn’t have a game because we had the first bye week of the playoffs. You’re kind of just like, what the hell do I do with two days in the weekend? Two days in the weekend in the wintertime, what do you do?” asks Amanda. “You can’t go outside because the weather is gross, so I went to Olive Garden.”
Most everyone finds a way to get by. Amanda gorges herself on all-you-can-eat salad, soup and bread sticks, Andy throws himself into the Mariners, and Joel tries to be perked up by his wife’s suggestions.
“You know, going for nice walks in the park without our cell phones so that we don’t have to think about it. We can go down to Seattle, walk around. We can even walk by CenturyLink and go up the stairs and look inside,” he says. “That way, you know, it’s still there, it’s not going anywhere. Not that I’m poo-pooing it, but nothing will take the place of game day.”