our day is here

For 36 years, football fans in Seattle have pinned their Super Bowl hopes on a band of mercenary gladiators wearing blue-green uniforms topped by helmets emblazoned with what must be the ugliest National Football League logo. Prior to 2005 when the Seahawks lost Super Bowl XL to the Pittsburgh Steelers due to an inexcusably bad call (the other consistent theme in Seahwaks' history), they had the longest string of playoff losses of any team in the history of the league, going back 21 years to 1984.

The heartbreak over the decades has centered on the team's struggle to find The Great Quarterback -- the Moses who would lead the faithful out of the darkness of the past four decades and into the promised land of the NFL championship. And now he's here, and our time is come.

Russell Wilson is a rookie and still-developing quarterback. He was very good at the beginning of the year, and the team's seven-and-five record does not accurately reflect how good they are today, as opposed to three months ago when Wilson played his first regular season game.

This handsome young man, graceful, educated, and well-spoken, puts on his Superman suit on Sunday afternoons, and reveals himself as an athlete, a dnacer, and a magician. Currently he's got the best quarterback rating of any newcomer heading into the playoffs.

The heavens are aligned above the Puget Sound. The signs are all auspicious, and the Seahawks are reaching their peak at exactly the right time. Our day has arrived.

If you didn't see Wilson and the Hawks' overtime victory yesterday, during which they overcame both the Chicago Bears and incompetent officiating, this may sound like the raving of a lunatic. But if you did, then you most likely became a true believer, as did I.