Walking around Seattle on the day of a Seahawks home game is unlike being in any other major NFL city, or at least it feels different. It could be the colors, as it’s impossible not to notice their shade of fluorescent green, but the entire city becomes overrun with Seahawks jerseys and gear on game days.
As Seahawks Hall of Famer Steve Largent explained, “it’s like a very good college team from a small town. It’s crazy.”
At that point it clicked for me. I was trying to figure out where I’d felt that vibe and it was the same kind of almost total and complete support you’d find on gameday in an SEC college town. Like Athens with red, Knoxville with orange, Baton Rouge with purple and gold, or Tuscaloosa with crimson (and houndstooth), Seattle is draped in navy and bright green on game day. The Seahawks have bought in to cultivating that college atmosphere quite literally, paying Texas A&M six figures each year to use the Aggies’ trademarked “12th Man” term for their fans.
To make sure it wasn’t recency bias from my visit to Seattle, I checked to see if there really was something different about Seattle’s commitment to going all out in their team’s gear compared to the rest of the NFL. In 2016, the Seahawks had six players in the top 50 of the NFL’s merchandise sales, the most of any franchise by a significant amount, topping Green Bay — which likewise has a college type vibe with the Packers being the only pro sports franchise in town — which had the next most, at four.
That loyalty to the Seahawks and all things Seahawks colored spills out into non-team official gear. Seemingly everyone is wearing Seahawks colored shoes — many Nike, which purposefully releases colorways in blue and bright green for that reason — and you’ll see plenty in Seahawks colored pants (including some Zubaz which I’m thrilled to find is still poppin’ off) with Seahawks-colored accessories.
The one thing Seattle lacks in terms of truly appropriating college football fan culture is a general lack of tailgating space near the stadium. Most parking is in decks around Seattle’s stadium area, where CenturyLink Field and Safeco Field both are located, making tailgating tricky. While there are plenty of bars for fans to get a rich lather working prior to the games, it’s not quite the same vibe.
Once a year, in an effort to fill this void, American Express, which has a partnership with the Seahawks, creates “Hawks Island,” a floating barge “tailgate” for cardholders. Hundreds of fans happily drop the $10 to hop on the barge where they can have their two complimentary beverages (and then how ever many more they want to buy), eat the food provided by local business, watch RedZone on the projector screen, meet with legends, and catch a free shuttle to the game.
Unsurprisingly, the barge is an even more concentrated population of Seahawks fans, a sea of navy and green, literally on the sea. This year’s edition took place ahead of the Seahawks’ Sunday night game against the Colts, and fans got the chance to meet with Largent and Walter Jones, who would both be at the stadium that night for the jersey retirement of Kenny Easley. There are a number of factors that play into the city’s devotion to the Seahawks, with the one of the main reasons being that the team has consistently been very good in recent years.
“It’s very unique,” Jones said about how Seattle supports the Seahawks. “It starts on Friday with Blue Friday [where fans wear Seahawks gear every Friday during the regular season]. You get the fans ready and the 12s, they ready to rock. You know, the team has won a Super Bowl so everybody wants to be a part of that. The last one, they was here in the NFC Championship, and if they can do that again, then every fan will want to be a part of that.”
Largent is quick to note that the fans have always been supportive, while noting that winning certainly helps fan spirit and the overall morale around the team.
“The thing is, the Seahawks fans have been great fans win or lose,” Largent said. “We went through a lot of seasons when we didn’t win and they were still very supportive and just as enthusiastic at a game as they are today.”
The support of the Seattle fans and their emergence as one of the league’s top fan bases in terms of team merchandise sales also comes from a place of pain, and something Seattle fans don’t love talking about. It doesn’t get brought up as a reason, but the Sonics’ departure for Oklahoma City still remains a sore spot for the city and it’s impossible to talk about Seattle sports fandom without mentioning it.
The Sonics left Seattle under somewhat dubious circumstances with new ownership failing to secure public money for a new arena, but the original reason Howard Schultz sold the team in 2006 to Clay Bennett, who eventually moved the team to OKC, was due to the team struggling financially during his brief tenure as owner. The Sonics departure is seared into the minds of Seattle fans and the Thunder serve as a daily reminder of what they should still have.
While not the fault of Seattle fans in the slightest, there’s still a bit of a subconscious feeling that maybe they could’ve done more or shown more support. Had they bought more jerseys, would the Sonics still exist? Had they sold out more games, would Russell Westbrook have just inked a 5-year extension in Seattle? The answer to these questions might still be no, but they won’t leave any doubt as to their dedication to the Seahawks. It would be impossible to walk through Seattle and not feel like the team has the full support of the city, even if you happened to, like Bennett, be looking for a reason to leave.
Once you get into the stadium for the game, the college-like atmosphere remains as fans stand at almost all times during play. Home field advantage is often difficult to quantify. Home record is often pointed to, but that’s as much about the quality of the team as much as the quality of the fans, but when discussing what NFL teams have the best home field advantages, Seattle is always named near the top of the list.
The stadium itself is built to funnel sound towards the field and it works impressively well, amplifying the voices of the 68,000 in attendance and on critical third downs it can be downright deafening. The video boards play to the crowd, reminding them after every false start by the other team that, since 2006, they lead the NFL in false starts as a stadium with 155 (they’re second in false starts per game at 1.6, just behind Arizona).
The crowd can only be loud when the Seahawks are on defense, which isn’t difficult in Seattle considering that side of the ball has been the Seahawks strength for Pete Carroll’s tenure. Against the Colts the defense feeds off the crowd — or feed the crowd, sometimes it’s hard to figure which comes first — with a pair of defensive touchdowns en route to a runaway second half victory.
The fans pour out into the streets around the stadium, filling bars as the sea of navy and green takes over once the city once again. Many, already wearing jerseys, shirts, and/or hats, carrying freshly purchased gear from the stadium. The Seahawks are the pride of Seattle, and they’ll be sure not to let them forget it.
