So the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl. They beat Pittsburgh in the first half, pretty convincingly, but in a bad omen they didn’t have more points at halftime- they were down 7-3 at the half. It really was frustrating, though, and a bad sign for the rest of the game, because they (in my not-very-expert opinion) definitely beat the Steelers, on offense and on defense, in the first half.

But the Hawks did occasionally seem to have that as a weakness; they didn’t quite have that “bayonet the wounded where they lay” kind of spirit that an NFL team needs. They had to settle for a field goal in the first quarter, they had drives end on goofy plays… basically, all the bad luck they could have was against them. I honestly thought they were going to come from behind and win the game, but it was not meant to be, I guess.

This has been a heck of a fun ride, though. Moving in next door to the stadium has provided me with some great entertainment, and I’m thinking very strongly about buying Hawks season tickets for 2006. There’s a guy at work who’s kind of kicking the idea around; like me, his significant other isn’t *that* into football, so it’d be a guys’ way to get out of the house for us. Well, for him; I live with just Indiana the Wonder Dog, so it’s not like I’m needing a kitchen pass to get some guy time away!

When I say I live next door, I mean *next door*. Here’s a picture of my friend Rick out on the balcony prior to the NFC championship game (where the Hawks kicked the living crap out of Carolina):

You can see just how close I am. It’s literally maybe a 2 minute walk out the door, down the stairs, and over to the main gates of the stadium.

I stayed home to watch the game, just me and the girlfriend. I’m going to be returning from out of town on Valentine’s Day; I head out to Scotland next week for a quickie, Thursday-through-Tuesday trip to see the Old Firm soccer match between Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic.

This match is, for Scottish soccer, roughly on par with the Super Bowl for American football- but they play it every season, four times a year in the Scottish Premier League and again in various other competitions.

It should be interesting to compare the differences between the biggest game in American football, and one of the bigger games (in league competition, anyway) in football (soccer) in Scotland.

Anyway, I’m bummed out about the Hawks, but not tremendously so. I think they could have easily won the game, and that as often happens in football rather than Pittsburgh really *winning* the game, it was more a matter of a combination of bad luck, Hawks mistakes, and a few crappy calls by the refs that made the Hawks lose.

My friend Jim (who is a freakin genius football coach- totally wasted in his career as an air traffic controller, which he does pretty damn well too) says that often you just coach and play to “not lose”- and if you do that better than the other guys, you’ll win. The Seahawks didn’t, so they lost. The city is planning a 2PM welcome home party tomorrow, though, and I think I might get off work early (assuming we have the staffing to get me out of there) to be here to see it.