SEATTLE — Macklemore’s fans in India are going to be disappointed next week.
The popular rap star, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, is also a lifelong Seahawks fan, and he has a Super Bowl to attend at MetLife Stadium instead of performing a scheduled mid-vacation gig in India the same weekend Seattle faces the Broncos on Feb. 2.
“I was supposed to take a month-long trip to India with my fiancee, and it’s getting postponed,” Macklemore told seattlepi.com Tuesday. “She’s going to hate me.”
The singer, who along with his producer Ryan Lewis have been nominated for seven Grammy Awards this year, is far from the only Seahawks fanatic making sacrifices since the team qualified for Super Bowl XLVIII last Sunday with a thrilling home win over the rival 49ers.
The Seahawks are just 60 minutes away from the first Lombardi Trophy in their nearly 40-year history, and this normally tranquil city has gone bonkers at that tantalizing prospect.
How excited are they? One young fan, Tim Connors, got a “Seahawks Super Bowl XLVIII Champs” tattoo before the season even started and has been sweating out their ride ever since.
Talk about having skin in the game.
“I’m not crazy,” Connors told a local TV station. “I’m not crazy at all.”
Connors might claim he isn’t crazy, but the city certainly is when it comes to the Seahawks.
It is impossible to walk more than five feet in Seattle’s scenic downtown and waterfront without seeing fans decked in Seahawks gear or noticing a shop or restaurant with a “12th Man” placard in its window.
The 12th Man refers to the Seahawks’ extraordinarily loud crowds at CenturyLink Field, but the fans all around the city provide quite the energy boost to the coaches and players, too.
Coach Pete Carroll and quarterback Russell Wilson end every media interview by acknowledging the fans, and those fans repay them with devotion that is nothing short of rabid.
Despite the nearly 3,000-mile distance to New Jersey and an average resale ticket price of more than $3,000 each, both the team and the league expect a large contingent of Seahawks fans to make the trek to MetLife Stadium.
Ticket brokers said they already are seeing strong interest from fans in Seattle, and that devotion is a big reason why those brokers were hoping for the Seahawks to reach the Super Bowl.
Pent-up demand for a championship is a big reason for the outpouring of Seahawks mania here.
Not only did the NBA allow Oklahoma City to steal the beloved SuperSonics, but this city hasn’t been able to celebrate a major sports title since those same Sonics claimed pro basketball’s crown in 1979.
There has been mostly losing and heartbreak in the meantime, with the Mariners inflicting most of the pain. Seattle has embraced Major League Soccer’s Sounders instead, regularly leading that league in attendance, but that can’t come close to matching the excitement being generated by the Seahawks.
The intensity also is being stoked by the belief the NFL owes them one after the Seahawks’ loss to the Steelers in Super Bowl XL in 2005, a game that featured several questionable calls against Seattle.
“We got robbed against the Steelers,” Macklemore told The Seattle Times last Sunday. “But this is the team. Looking at this team at the beginning, in the preseason, it was like, ‘This is the team to do it.’ It’s been nothing but an amazing year to watch. We deserve to be there.”
Seahawks fans are just hoping they can finish it for a change.