The Super Bowl, the Seahawks, and Signing Kara Goucher: An Unlikely Love Story
Let me take you back…to Super Bowl Sunday, February 2, 2014.
It was a big day. BIG DAY.
Well yeah, the Seattle Seahawks were in the Super Bowl – an unlikely perch for our birds. (Pro sports lovers in Seattle know it all too well… we’ve not had consistent luck with the winning).
But the bigger news, MUCH bigger news, was that Kara, Adam, and Colt were in town to visit Oiselle and consider us as a sponsor. As fate would have it, Adam’s beloved Denver Broncos were our opponent that year. At first, we heard he planned to watch the game at their hotel room, and we were like, “Nooooo, of course we’ll all watch it together!”
Fast forward to the game. A whole group of us gathered in the Leskos’ TV room. The Gouchers arrived in full Denver garb. Kara demurred and rolled her eyes a bit, not a huge football fan she said. Yeah we said. Us neither. (I mean, from our point of view, we were still mostly busy pinching ourselves that we were hanging out with the Gouchers on a Sunday afternoon. Game, what game?!)
For those of you who don’t remember (or didn’t watch or care), I’ll just put it this way: Super Bowl 2014 was a game in which the only thing that interrupted Seattle's winning was more winning. From the opening play, when they scored two points on a Denver safety, to multiple TD’s where it seemed like the ball simply fell out of the sky into the open arms of a Seattle receiver, it was by all measures, a total blowout (final score: 43-8 Seattle).
While at first, each side pulled for their teams, it quickly devolved to us consoling, hoping, (wishing), that Denver would score so that our out of town guests would feel more welcome. More happy. That they’d actually like us! And not associate the hangout with a pro sports humiliation.
Well, it all ended okay. In fact, we quickly got off on long conversations about Track & Field, the who-what-where of pro running, and hearing the Gouchers’ stories of all the many places and races they’d been. I mean, c’mon, it’s not every day you get to hang out with two iconic Olympians.
And for what it’s worth, Seattle would have its comeuppance the next year, getting beat by the Patriots on a game ending half yard play that should have been a no-brainer handoff to Marshawn Lynch. And in 2016, Denver would take the Super Bowl win against Carolina.
Super Bowls come and go, but I like to think we all won in 2014. Right, Adam, right?!
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