Now that the second week of January has arrived and football season is finally over, we can all return to the more serious aspects of life. Wait! What’s that you say? Someone in the Pacific Northwest is still playing football? You’re talking soccer, right? Rugby? Flag football?Yes, it’s true, football in this corner of the country will extend at least a dozen days into the new year, a rarity in these parts. The Seattle Seahawks are among eight teams still alive in the National Football League and will travel to Atlanta for a second-round playoff game Sunday.
Meanwhile, college fans in Washington and Oregon are still talking about the recently completed season that saw their four favorite teams win 62 percent of their games and post three winning records, punctuated on Tuesday by the University of Oregon Ducks’ No. 2 rating in the final Associated Press poll.
We don’t dip our editorial toe in the sports pond too often, but after so many months of fiscal cliffs, gun-control debates and incensed electorates, today we’ll take a proud and unabashed belly flop into the water and celebrate the 2012 football season in the Pacific Northwest. Well done, warriors! There are plenty of reasons to be thrilled about the gridiron battles that, fortunately, distract us from agonizing partisan wars elsewhere.
Clearly, the Seahawks are the team no one in pro football wants to play these days. They’ve won six straight, and eight of their past nine. Big, bad, home team Atlanta is only a 1-point favorite according to the more informed oddsmakers.
