We’re days past that little football game Sunday in Arizona, and it keeps trending like crazy on Facebook, which makes sense. Even if you don’t know a kicking tee from the 50-yard line, you know Super Bowl XLIX was the site of the worst coaching decision in the history of professional sports, one that kept the Seattle Seahawks from consecutive NFL titles.
There is more. As of Wednesday afternoon, both the New England Patriots and the Seahawks were generating nearly 1,000 tweets per hour, and remember: This is happening in the Twitter world, where stuff that occurred five minutes ago already is ancient news.
Then there was Patriots coach Bill Belichick taking time away Wednesday from his team’s victory parade in Boston to give his thoughts on the subject.
Why not? The rest of the universe is doing the same.
The agony of defeat always trumps the thrill of victory when it comes to tugging at the soul. The Patriots didn’t win Sunday in Glendale, Arizona. The Seahawks lost. For verification, there are a bunch of hash tags to prove it.
During a 24-hour-period through Tuesday evening, there were 400 tweets per hour about the Patriots capturing a fourth Lombardi Trophy. They did so with their familiar tandem of Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, the designated All-American boy with the supermodel wife.
Yeah, well, during that same time frame, there were 2,800 tweets per hour about the Seahawks. It’s just more interesting to contemplate how the Seahawks blew a Super Bowl victory in the final seconds despite sitting inches away from a game-winning touchdown. They got that close to scoring after a catch that would make The Flying Wallendas envious.
Moments later, Seattle’s offensive brain trust of head coach Pete Carroll and coordinator Darrell Bevell did their own high-wire act without a net. They decided to throw the ball into the end zone instead of giving it to explosive running back Marshawn Lynch, who basically was low risk. The ball was intercepted, and early during the afterward, I began thinking: “I haven’t seen this much grief up close and personal after a brutal loss in 23 years.”
Back then, when tweets were only done by birds, the Atlanta Braves shocked the Pittsburgh Pirates with a rally out of nowhere in the bottom of the ninth inning to snatch the 1992 National League pennant. Sid Bream forgot he was the slowest man in baseball to score the game-winning run from second base at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium after he slid underneath a throw by Gold Glove left fielder Barry Bonds.
The Pirates clubhouse was a morgue. Hours later, when I finished writing for the night, I peeked inside the place for a final time. It was empty — except for Pirates center fielder Andy Van Slyke sitting motionless on a stool in the middle of the room, staring a hole into the floor.
There also was 1981, when I stood among those rubbing their eyes in Dayton, Ohio, as tiny St. Joseph used the last seconds to shove No.1-ranked DePaul out of the first round of the NCAAA basketball tournament. With tears flowing across his big face, DePaul star player Mark Aguirre ran out of the arena into the snowy afternoon. He walked all the way back to the team hotel, and I followed him for part of his journey.
When I returned, DePaul coach Ray Meyer, who was nearly 70, eased outside of his locker room, sighing heavily before reporters and looking ready to collapse any moment.
The Seahawks locker room was a little of those Pirates, a little of those DePaul Blue Demons and a lot of something else: Pure anger. I was among the few reporters in the Seahawks locker room from the time it opened until we were asked to leave about an hour later. In between, I saw Seahawks players ignore protocol in these situations. Instead of saying the Earth is flat and their offensive brain trust knew what it was doing near the end, they ripped that nonrunning play like the rest of us.
On one side of the Seahawks locker room, there was wide receiver Doug Baldwin blasting at will (“All of us are surprised”), and on the other side, there was somebody else, and then somebody else. “I don’t understand how you don’t give (the ball) to the best back in the league, on not even the one-yard line,” said linebacker Bruce Irvin, with the body language of a guy trying to recover from the flu after getting smacked by a semi.
Across the way, as teammates grumbled in and out of the shower, defensive backs Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas were more depressed than Irvin, especially Thomas. They sat frozen in their seats for the longest time, resembling this generation’s Van Slyke in my world.
It could be worse. It’s not as if they are this century’s Bill Buckner and Everson Walls. To hear Buckner tell it, it took him nearly two decades to forgive Red Sox fans for cursing his name through the years after his gaffe during the 1986 World Series. Walls was a star defensive back in 1981 for the Dallas Cowboys. Even so, he still is tormented by The Catch, which was Joe Montana throwing that miracle pass over his head to Dwight Clark to push the San Francisco 49ers into the Super Bowl.
At one point, quarterback Russell Wilson, who threw the interception, dropped by to console them. Then came Carroll with a few words, but nothing helped. Sherman and Thomas just sat there, thinking, hurting, wondering when this nightmare would end.
Apparently not as long as it keeps trending.
Which looks like forever.