Why I wanted the Seahawks to lose?

I didn't watch much of yesterday's Seahawks-Bears playoff game (this isn't helping my sports blogging bona fides), but I suppose I was sort of cheering for Seattle, as my default setting is to root against any Chicago sports team.

Yet while I was watching - and later listening on the radio in my car - my interests changed, and I began pulling for the Seahawks' elimination from the playoffs. It's not because of any dislike toward the team. Their uniforms look pretty cool. It's nothing against Matt Hasselbeck or Shaun Alexander. I like both of those players. I think Mike Holmgren's a very good coach. And Seattle is a city I desperately want to visit someday soon.

But if I had to hear one more reference to Seattle's Pete Hunter being a loan officer, I was probably going to shove a white-hot knitting needle through one ear and out the other.

Yes, I get it. One week, this guy is processing loans for a mortgage office. The next, a Seahawks team with no healthy defensive backs is calling him to ask if he wants to cover Terrell Owens in a playoff game. It's a fun story.

But did we have to be reminded of it every single time Hunter was involved in a play?

"Pass to Berrian out in the flat, tackled by the loan officer."

"Grossman down the sideline, incomplete. Pete Hunter on the
coverage. Did you know he was a loan officer just two weeks ago?

"Hey, maybe after the game, he can help me refinance my mortgage.

Oh yeah, you need all the help you can get with that! HAR HAR!
CHORTLE!

And oh, by the way, a gain of three up the middle for Thomas Jones..."

For the love of Starbucks, how much more of this could we have been subjected to, had the Seahawks advanced? Can you imagine if Seattle made it to the Super Bowl again, and we'd have had two weeks of loan officer stories to listen to?

So thank you, Chicago Bears. Thank you, Robbie Gould, for kicking the 49-yard field goal in overtime that sent the Seahawks home. And thanks also for sending Pete Hunter back to that mortgage office. No offense, Pete.