The Streak

It’s not very often in sports that you feel invincible.  If you’re a big enough sports fan, you probably follow multiple teams.  And unless you’re from New England, those teams don’t usually all do well at the same time.

But, for a few weeks, us fans here in Seattle got to feel invincible and it came against pretty high odds.  Up until last Thursday (when the Huskies lost at Stanford) the Husky football and basketball teams, along with the Seahawks, didn’t lose a game from December 26th to January 13th.

• The Seahawks lost badly to Tampa Bay on December 26th.  It was ugly and there wasn’t much reason to hope their season would last another 3 weeks.  It did.  The Seahawks would beat the Rams the next week and then beat what seemed to be insurmountable odds the next week against the Saints.  Yes, they lost last Sunday.  But, no one thought it would last that long.
• The Huskies football team only played one game during this stretch but it was a game for the ages.  Facing a team that they’d already lost to by 35 points this season, they dominated the Nebraska Cornhuskers in an old-school defensive performance.  Actually, the Husky football team hasn’t lost since the 6th of November.
• The Huskies basketball team hadn’t lost a game in over a month.  Since losing to Texas A&M on December 11th, the Huskies went on to win 6 in a row, including two tough games against USC and UCLA.  That ended against Stanford on last Thursday but they quickly got back on track on Sunday against Cal.

18 days.  For 18 days everything went right for a sports town that many have called the worst in the country.  Now, in the midst of a Milton Bradley arrest, a UW basketball police investigation, and an off-season of uncertainty for the Seahawks, things appear to be headed back to normal.

Then again, maybe not.  Maybe it’ll be good for the Mariners to rid themselves of Bradley.  Maybe the police investigation will blow over and maybe the Seahawks will improve just like they did last off-season.

Seattle has gotten a bad sports reputation for the better part of this decade and will always be an afterthought in places like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.  But, in those 18 days we were better than everyone.  Things are looking up and there’s hope that maybe it’ll last for more than 18 days in the future.

Thanks for reading,

Andrew