Opening kickoff!

I'm not a huge football fan like I am for baseball, but I do follow the Seattle Seahawks a little bit and I've been looking forward to today's playoff game against the Green Bay Packers.

Classic story line: Mike Holmgren, the Seahawks' coach, returns to the icy field where he led the Packers to a championship in the 1996 season. Matt Hasselbeck, the Hawks' quarterback, was once understudy to the Packers' genius quarterback Brett Favre, who is still playing and racking up career records.

Plus the Pack is the legendary team of Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr: Playing in a cold, small town in Wisconsin, they were winners of the first two Super Bowls and still more than hold their own against big-market superpowers. As even the Seattle papers have pointed out this week, it's hard to root against them.

Today's game is in the snow, just right.

The local coverage, by the way, has been predictably boosterish and over the top, but what the heck. Everyone's having fun, and I'm sure it's selling papers and generating clicks.

Speaking of which, I thought the Times made good use of a Google Maps feature, plotting Hawks fans around the world, with clickable plot points in which the rooters say a few words about where they'll be watching today.


View Larger Map

Says Sam Foley, Wanouchi-cho, Gifu-Ken, Japan, for example: "I'll be watching and cheering the Hawks in Japan starting at 6:30 am! Go Hawks!"

Kinda cool.

(Public-use photo above is by Flickr user occecid)
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Man, in the few minutes I've been typing this, the Seahawks, who are 8-point underdogs -- have recovered two fumbles and scored two touchdowns to take a 14-0 lead. Shocker.

Postgame update: Whoa! After that great start, the Hawks fell apart or the Pack got it together, or something. Final score: Green Bay 42, Seattle 20. Season over. Damn.