Blame the Seahawks’ Super Bowl loss on inept (or even crooked) officiating, if you must. Many have, on sports talk radio and online chat boards.

There, fans have been ranting with levels of invective that might make Ann Coulter blush. But the title of a chat room at sqidly.com/seahawks said it cleanly and simply: WE WUZ ROBBED.

Of course, it was really only a professional sports event. A show. A big, spectacular show, one as American as apple pie and Enron. Given the nation’s current overabundance of cynicism, it’s easy to fantasize about corruption in high places everywhere.

But even if the Seahawks didn’t entirely lose on their own accord, does it really matter?

Was the past autumn and winter’s Hawk-hype all that important in the universal big-big picture?

I say yes.

Sure, there were the silly moments within the whole mania. Such as the “Seahawks Mass” held last Friday evening at St. James Cathedral.

Granted, the mass might have been just one more publicity stunt in a fortnight of publicity stunts, a means for local Catholics to get onto some of that God-plus-football media attention. So what if, as one of the priests at the mass was later quoted on the TV news, “I don’t know if God is necessarily a football fan”? It’s still a good excuse to bring the parishioners together on a less-than-somber occasion, to pray that our heroes entertain us without getting too seriously banged up in the process, and perhaps without getting caught performing un-role-model-like behaviors.

On the Friday afternoon before the mass, the whole city seemed abuzz about the game. Bank tellers and checkout clerks dutifully wore team apparel; team flags and banners abounded, especially downtown during and after the big rally in Westlake Center.

But on Sunday afternoon, the place was as quiet and ghost-town-esque as Christmas morning. Everyone, it seemed, was watching the game, working, or finding some alternate activity to deliberately avoid watching the game. The Capitol Hill bar where I’d watched the previous two Super Bowls was particularly calm; it turned out the owners were holding a private party at their suburban home and had invited most of the bar’s regular patrons. When I went wandering outside at halftime, Broadway and Pine was as quiet and devoid of human activity as I’d ever seen it in the daytime.

That’s part of the social dynamic of pro football, particularly as it played out this year in this town.

The Seahawks’ miracle season was played out in huge public gatherings (the home games) and smaller public parties (the sports bars). The two big rallies the week before the game were free celebrations open to all ages, genders, races, and classes.

But the championship game itself was held, as it always is, on (presumably) neutral turf. Its telecasts are often viewed at private parties and semi-private bar events (reservations recommended).

The result: The Seahawks won in public and lost in private. The fans’ cheers were out in the open; their tears were behind closed doors.

And so the conventional wisdom, the national media, and the Vegas oddsmakers were right, and the veteran and newbie members of Seahawk Nation were sent away with a few tart remarks about how we were lucky to have gotten as far in the playoffs as we did.

Seattle can return to being largely forgotten in the NYC press, except as the butt of stale jokes about (as one pro-Seahawks ESPN commentator said in chiding a pro-Pittsburgh ESPN commentator days before the game) “coffee, rain, and Kurt Cobain.”

But the faithful know better. Had a few penalties and refs’ decisions gone the other way, our city would have had the opportunity to party in the streets, shouting our presence to the world.

The Super Bowl telecast opened with a rewritten version of Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Had our Hawks won, a more appropriate Seuss reading would have been from Horton Hears a Who.
But just wait. One day soon, perhaps this week next year, we’ll get our chance to unite in a rousing cry of “We are here! We are here! We are here!”

Some other pseudo-random thoughts on the game itself, and on the whole show surrounding it:

• After four different commercials with the desperate Bud Light dudes suffering any humiliation just for a beer, I wanted to reach out to them and direct them to the nearest AA meeting.
• What do you know? Mick Jagger can still get his words bleeped at age 62! Either he refuses to go safe and soft, or he’s passed directly from angry young man to bitter old crank without a stop at middle-aged respectability.