While I am not a huge fan of trash talking while playing sports, I do like the witty side of smack talk associated with sporting events. And as my Seahawk team was in the Super Bowl this past Sunday, there has been a lot of opportunity for smack talk in my life lately.

I live in East Tennessee. This is Peyton Manning country. Living in East Tennessee means that you are a current Tennessee Volunteer fan; you used to be an Indianapolis Colts fan, and are a current Denver Broncos fan. In East Tennessee, the holy quartet is the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Peyton Manning, in that order (but only barely).

There were only a few fans openly rooting for the Seahawks in my neck of the woods this week, and we were all imports. So as you can imagine, as a somewhat vocal supporter of the Seahawks, people let me have it. “Go Broncos!” was a constant refrain every time anybody walked by my office last week. Then they usually followed up with some “Peyton Manning is great” boast. There is a chalk board in the break room that we hold all sorts of sports prediction contests on like, Name all the bowl game winners, or March madness types of competitions and this last week there was a guess the Super Bowl score contest.

The night janitor, that I have never met, and I were the only two people that picked the Seahawks. One of my co-workers waited until I was in the break room to put her prediction down, “21 for the Seahawks… and for the Broncos…22, Hah!” I tried to explain how difficult getting 22 points was to get in a football game and she said she could care less as the only reason she had put down a score was to raze me.

Later that day, I noticed a 45-3 Broncos score and the initials next to the score were S.A.L., which I didn’t recognize. The next morning, I was in the break room wondering aloud who was such a big Broncos fan. A co-worker finally admitted that he had put down the score just to get me riled up and that SEAHAWKS ARE LOSERS was the employee’s name. Nicely played.

As I was in a relatively safe environment, I made my Seahawk rebuttals, but as I was in East Tennessee where they know how to hide a body, I was very polite in my smack talking. (Don’t mess with Peyton.) I sent out a few random Bronco-slam texts during the game and received the typical my-team-is-getting-trounced-but-I-need-to-reply comebacks. I received one reply that said, “The Broncos were playing like the Seattle Sonics must have played their last year in Seattle.” Ouch! That was a low-blow even for smack-talk.

Well, the Seahawks won and everyone was very quiet when I reported to work Monday morning. A few of the quiet Seahawk supporters came out of the woodwork, but for the most part I was the only person in a celebratory mood. I brought Seahawks candies that we had made for the game to soften the blow, but realized early on that any Seahawk smack-talk carried with it potentially hazardous consequences. Even my, “Your score was pretty close to being correct” jab to S.A.L. didn’t draw a response.  It was just best to be quiet. So in the end, I chose to celebrate by myself with an Americano at the local Starbucks. It seemed Seattley.

Go Hawks; two in a row!

Let the smack talk commence.