[Aztec]

Terry Bradshaw, after living a full life, died. When he got to heaven, God was showing him around. They came to a modest little house with a faded Steelers flag in the window. "This house is yours for eternity, Terry" said God. "This is very special; not everyone gets a house up here." Terry felt special, indeed, and walked up to his house. On his way up the porch, he noticed another house just around the corner. It was a 3 story mansion with a blue and white sidewalk, a 50 foot tall flag pole with an enormous Seahawks flag, and in every window a blue Towel. Terry looked at God and said, "God, I'm not trying to be ungrateful, but I have a question. I was an all-pro quarterback, I hold many NFL records, and I even went to the Hall of Fame." God said, "So what's your point, Terry?" "Well, why does Matt Hasselbeck get a better house than me?" God chuckled, and said, "Terry, that's not Matt's house, it's mine." GO HAWKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Trevor]

I suspect there will be swarms of locusts plaguing the steelers.

[greg]

Yeah well, just for the sake of argument, here's this. I especially like the penultimate line. “Giving Seattle The Needle” Rick Reilly Sports Illustrated Okay, Seattle, grab a grande, skinny, no-foam, half-caf Espresso Macchiato and let me explain why the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to grind you up like a Sumatra blend in Super Bowl XL. You suck at sports. You always have. You make nice motherboards, but you're dweebier than Frasier Crane's wine club. You've had the big three pro sports for 30 years now--almost 40 for the NBA--and you have one lousy championship to show for it. Uno. The 1978 Seattle SuperSonics. My God, you people have fewer parades than Venice. What's amazing is, you do college sports even worse. In the 70 years that a mythical national championship has been awarded in college football, the University of Washington has one half of one title: in 1991 (with Miami). Zippo in basketball, baseball, track or field. O.K., the Huskies are good at crew (three women's titles, one men's). Wonderful. Somewhere, three salmon cheer. Your most famous athlete is a horse, Seattle Slew. Your most famous athletic moment was Bo Jackson's turning the Boz's chest into a welcome mat on Monday Night Football. Your greatest contribution to sports was the Wave, the fan-participation stunt that screams to the world, "We have no idea what the score is!" And do you know why you stink, Seattle? Because ... 1. You're too damn nice. Look at your Seahawks. Your MVP halfback, Shaun Alexander, teaches kids chess. Your scariest player is named Pork Chop. My God, last week, you offered valet parking service to reporters at Seahawks headquarters. (Seattle fans: If you see valet parking at Detroit's Ford Field this week, they're trying to steal your car.) Nearly every five-dollar-steak-tough athlete who comes to Seattle leaves--Gary Payton and Randy Johnson for instance. Consider Seattle's two favorite athletes--Steve Largent and Fred Couples. Those guys wouldn't complain if somebody extinguished a Cohiba in their ears. Your sportswriters are more forgiving than Hillary Clinton. If they covered Jeffrey Dahmer, they'd refer to him as "a people person." You Seattle fans don't just accept mediocrity. You crave it. You support your boys come hell or low water. You show up at the rate of three million a year for the Mariners, who never fail to let you down. Even the stadium sounds cuddly: Safeco Field. You pack the house for the underachieving SuperSonics, led by the NBA's nicest loser, Ray Allen. Your Seahawks went 21 years without a playoff win, and the fans didn't so much as clear their throats. Everybody just goes, "Well, that was fun. Let's kayak!" Hey, you can't spell Seattle without settle. The whole town is 100% June Cleaver. I once walked into Nordstrom, the Seattle-based department store, and sheepishly asked if I could bring back a shirt I'd bought a month before in another town. The clerk said, "Sir, this is Nordstrom. You could wear it for 10 years, throw up on it and roll down a mountain in it and we'd take it back." Ask that at Neiman Marcus and they call security. It ain't happening. Walruses don't do triple Salchows, and Seattle teams don't win titles. 2. You're too damn geeky. Your owner, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, looks like the kid in high school who always got taped to the goalposts. If Allen wins, will he call all his friends from band camp? Throw his slide rule into the air? Plot his joy on a scatter chart? Look, your average Seahawks fan drives a Prius. Your average Steelers fan drives a Ford Excursion, which has Priuses in its tire treads. Seahawks fans own poodles. Steelers fans eat them. 3. You're too damn wet. Seattle is a great place if you happen to be mold. It just rained 27 straight days and it wasn't even a record. Seattle is basically a lot of guys waiting for a bus with rain starting to seep into their socks. Most kids are seven years old before they realize the umbrella is not an extension of the right arm. No wonder most great athletes leave. Ken Griffey Jr. left, basically saying, "I want my kid to be able to play outside once in a while." In short, you people are too damn peaceful and happy in your Emerald City. You ever know anybody from Pittsburgh? You want this Super Bowl. Pittsburgh needs it. You're going to get smoked like a platter of smelt. (But do you mind if we come live there?)

[marta]

Why don’t we see any Seahawk fans in Detroit? Seattleites don’t want to spend any more time in Detroit than they have to. Why do we see Steeler fans in Detroit? Coming from Pittsburgh, they think that Detroit is an Upgrade

[Slugman]

A Steelers' fan on mathematics: "Well, ya see, there's three kinds of people, those that are good at math and those that aren't".

[Aztec]

[kleet]

Thoughts on the Super Bowl By Jim Louderback, PC Magazine Let me state up front that I am not a Paul Allen fan. I've been known to call him "the world's worst investor." I've also encouraged him to make micro-loans to entrepreneurs in Third World countries because the return would be better than his mélange of flawed, failed investments. The two-plus years I worked for him, while I was at TechTV, were easily the worst of my career. Yet, despite all that, I felt an odd sense of pride when the Seattle Seahawks beat the Carolina Panthers to go to Super Bowl XL. This all really crystallized when loudmouth former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw interviewed Allen shortly after the victory (aside: Does anyone else think that Jim Cramer and Bradshaw are actually the same person?). Before congratulating Paul on the win, Bradshaw actually asked him for help with his e-mail. There was Paul Allen, on national TV, forced to endure the blatherings of a loquacious jock sporting an IQ substantially less than the square root of his own. And that got me thinking. This Super Bowl isn't just about football. It isn't just about Seattle. In part, it's about how the world has changed from one where real men use real muscles to make real things into one where the brainiacs rule. The contrast between the two teams playing in the Super Bowl—the Steelers and the Seahawks—couldn't be more stark. On one side, you've got a team named after the process of turning rocks into molten metal—and then into swords, plowshares, cars, airplanes, and buildings. The Steelers hail from the ultimate blue-collar town: Pittsburgh, where the Midwest starts. Their coach, Bill Cowher, is a cartoonish caricature of every bloviating, blathering gym coach from junior high—complete with spittle, whistle, and scowl—constantly belittling and berating his players into submission. Cowher is an anachronism in the NFL (and in the U.S.), a league in which the brainiacs are winning. The most successful pro football team over the past ten years, the New England Patriots, is led by Bill Belichick, widely rumored to have a higher IQ than Bill Gates. Seattle's skipper, Mike Holmgren, has an intellect just a notch below but still in the "brilliant" category. Paul Allen also stands out in the clubby world of NFL team owners. You can just see the king of the geeks at those winter meetings, sitting with Oakland's mercurial Al Davis, a former tough-guy coach; Minnesota's Zygi Wilf, a shopping-mall magnate; Washington's Daniel Snyder, a former advertising exec; Dallas's Jerry Jones, a micromanager and wildcat oil-well driller; and New England's Robert Kraft, a cardboard tycoon. I'd pick Paul in a game of 3D chess against any of 'em—hell, against all of 'em at once.—Continue reading... Nope, this game is a synopsis of where this country—and indeed the world—is going. You've got one Super Bowl–bound team purchased by Microsoft money, powered by intellectuals, hailing from the town that Boeing abandoned, the city that brought us Windows, the Xbox, Starbucks, Nintendo USA, and the Space Needle. On the other side, you've got a team powered by machismo and muscles. These folks represent a town where steel was king, and, ironically, one that is now trying to reinvent itself as a high-tech hub. Even more telling, the game is being played in the ultimate old-line blue-collar town—Detroit. Talk about a sunset industry that's desperately trying to develop technology to get back into a position of relevance. So please join me in putting aside my prejudices towards the "accidental billionaire." Sure, Paul Allen's a rich boy who has it better than you or I ever will. I once gave him a tour of CES, along with his escort, the supermodel Imogene, and, boy, was I jealous. He dated Jerry Hall. And his floating parties are legendary bacchanals of excess that I'm sorry I never got invited to. But for just one day, let's root for Paul, with Paul, for Seattle and for the Seahawks. Why? Because this is more than just a game. It's more than just a chance to see if Go Daddy can produce a G-rated Super Bowl ad. It's a referendum, a tipping point for our whole high-tech, digital way of life. I hope the Seahawks win. I'll be the first to congratulate Paul for a job well done. Because even though his partner, Bill Gates, is quietly saving the world, we need crazy rich kids like Paul Allen to remind us every now and then that the war's not over, the battle's not won. The overmuscled, narrow-minded brawniacs still control much of the world. But inside Ford Field, on one particular Sunday at least, we can hope they'll be going down.