It Takes a Big Man to Be Magnanimous in Overwhelming Victory

Last updated on: December 29, 2014 at 4:57 pm by Mark Shea

It Takes a Big Man to Be Magnanimous in Overwhelming Victory 2014-12-29T16:57:01-07:00 Mark Shea

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Unfortunately for Bronco fans, I lost 80 pounds so I think I will offer a few reflections on the crushing, humiliating defeat that the world’s most beloved championship football team–The Amazing Seattle Seahawks–inflicted on the now prostrate Broncos.

It was foretold in prophecy both mystic and scientificalistic as a Utah ape delivered the sure and certain verdict of victory for the Hawks. I tried to warn Bronconies that only a fool would argue with a rock solid scientificalistic analysis like that. I suggested we just go ahead and spare the feelings of the pathetic losers who insisted on putting such infallible prophecy to the test and declare victory without the formality of a game that would only heap burning shame on the Broncos. I am, after all, a compassionate man and don’t like seeing miserable failures ground into the dirt under the spikey cleats of the peerless Titans of Sport. I do have a soul, you know.

But no. Denver–having once had a reputation as a rough, tough Western town full of ruthless gunslingers, prostitutes, and drunken miners flush with gold and ready to be fleeced of their cash by card sharks and big city slickers from Philadelphia (but I digress)–gazed in spirit across the mighty Rockies to our gentle hamlet on the shores of Puget Sound and made a snap judgment (and, by the way, speaking of snapping, I must say the way the Bronco center snapped the ball right past Manning’s head on the very first play, thereby delivering the first two of our many, nigh uncountable, points into our hands was a *very* auspicious beginning).

But again, I digress. Where was I? Ah yes! In Denver, minds that imagined they are to our minds as ours are to the beasts that perish, regarded this city with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

We meanwhile just went on being what we are: awesome.

Here in the land of gentle whale watchers, granola-eating earthy crunchies, metrosexual jammie clad health care discussers, soppy gay wedding sentimentalists, intense Janeane Garofalo lookalikes in hornrim glasses, passionate advocates for polymorphous perversities, fanatical recyclers, Unitarians in blocky African wooden jewelry and Birkenstocks leading bake sales to fund the library, chainsaw artists, bicyclists filled with snooty contempt for petrochemical consumers, New Age crystal gazers with 35,000 year old spirit guides helping them with their investment decisions in aromatherapy corporations, Pike Place fishmongers, gritty Indie bands, hipsters conducting their entire romances by tweeting partners of indeterminate gender from two tables away at the Starbucks on Aurora and 220th, Prius dealers offering cars with the Obama sticker pre-applied, parents placing their three year olds in high-intensity courses to groom them for executive positions at Microsoft and Nintendo, damp and dispirited Metro riders waiting patiently for winter rain to turn to spring rain like cattle waiting for nothing in particular… well, we appeared to the scions of cowpokes and painted ladies to be…. soft.

Which was, of course, EXACTLY OUR PLAN! Because all along super-genius billionaire Paul Allen, who is after all, the only super-genius billionaire on planet earth to have actually built a combination Rock and Roll/Science Fiction Museum was breeding a race of warriors, accountable only to him alone and obedient to his iron and despotic will. You may ask where the Seahawks originated. They were men once. But now perfected by a genetic manipulation program into something which, while still able to pass basic tests for species conformity to bourgeois “league standards”, nonetheless display certain superhuman and preternatural abilities that are no longer of this world.

So your team–indeed all the teams of the earth–had no chance against the satisfyingly Marvel Comic nicknamed Legion of Boom. This is why our Hawks tread down your puny insignificant team like grass. It is why they marched confidently into the Super Bowl (or “Super Bowel” as the charming rustics of Colorado call it)

Highly educated Seattleites (including Masters degree in Communications holder Richard Sherman, who can trash talk your loser team in iambic pentameter) found that charming.

But I digress. Anyway, thanks to the warrior super-race bred by Paul Allen in the laboratories beneath the Science Fiction Museum and fed on a daily diet of pure Washington rain water, oysters and salmon harvested from the gently lapping waves of Puget Sound, a regimen of uprooting old growth evergreen forests and replanting them in over-logged areas, and haiku and feng shui to center the spirit, the Seahawks marched into the Super Bowl and utterly dominated as they kicked the clenched, fearful, and ultimately despondent little buttocks of the Denver Broncos. From epic interception-to-touchdown plays, to even more epic touchdown runs the length of the field, to a defense that denied Denver a first down until sometime into that part of the second quarter when people with small bladders are thinking about their first bathroom break but reluctant to leave because the Hawks might again pull off some breathtaking coup to inflict further humilation on their prey, it was wall-to-wall humiliation.

At one point during the half-time, one of the Talking Heads asked, “What will Denver have to do to come from behind?” To which my pal Tom shouted, “SCORE 23 POINTS!” Alas, they only scored 8. Meanwhile we pumped up the jam to 43–the very meaning of life plus one. My sense of symmetry and closure thought it would have been good to bring the score up to 48 or 58–58 would have been a nice round number–but the Hawks, being kindly conquerers, decided to go ahead and leave the margin at a mere 35 points. Still humiliating, but not enough to leave the population of Denver eating out of dribble cups.

As a Catholic, and particularly as a Catholic writer, there are certain theological aspects to this obvious sign of divine approval for My Home Town that deserve examination. Here is one:

Of course, some–namely the weak–view my attitude as “insufferable”. But in fact, I am stooping down from the (literally) Olympian heights of Western Washington in order to show those who have yet to win the grim Darwinian struggle of life that there is hope for even the weakest. Why, with enough pluck and determination, you might be the next….. nahhhhh… I’m just playing with your head. You’ve got a better chance of joining the ranks of the 85 richest people in the world than you do of defeating The Amazing Seattle Seahawks. Your team lost for a reason: because we were not merely better and more awesome, but immeasurably better and more awesome and your puny, insignificant team sucked. The Broncos did the very best they could–and it wasn’t nearly good enough because THE SEAHAWKS ARE THE GREATEST FOOTBALL TEAM IN THE WORLD AND PROVED IT IN OPEN COMBAT WITH THE BRONCOS!!!! WOO HOO!

In closing, I think it only appropriate to offer a word of praise to God, who is a HUGE Seahawks fan and has chosen our team from all the nations of the earth for this, THE 2014 SUPERBOWL VICTORY!!!

I will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously
the horse and rider has thrown into the Sea(hawks). (Exodus 15:1 – Seahawks Standard Version)

The Victory Parade, presumably featuring the Broncos being dragged in chains down Fourth Avenue behind Russell Wilson’s Triumphal Chariot, will be on Wednesday. Meanwhile, here’s the mood in Hawksville:

Best post-game quote was from a priest in Bremerton: “Making plans to go out and burn some cars – meet at church?”

Uncategorized

Bragging

Previous Post

February 3, 2014

85 people own nearly half of global wealth

Next Post

February 3, 2014 Evangelical Reactions to Marian Apparitions...

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 September 2006 June 2006 July 2005 April 2005 May 2002 April 2002 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz