Besides Bad Bunny, there was another controversy about a nickname that never captured the global headlines of Super Bowl 60.
I am not an educated ornithologist, but I do spend a fair amount of time fishing from sea to shining sea. When the big fins aren’t biting, my eyes drift skyward to identify the high flyers that aren’t fish.
When the Seahawks punched their ticket to Super Bowl 60, I wanted to understand a bit of their high-flying bird history.
But actually, there is no such avian as a Seahawk. No ornithologist would refer to them as such – they don’t even spell it as one word. Some people, though, consider “sea hawks” to be a nickname for Ospreys or Skuas.
Ospreys are found on every continent except Antarctica, while Skuas are migratory birds found from the North Pole to the South Pole. So I guess Seattle qualifies.
Are Ospreys or Skuas the model for the Seattle Seahawks logo? Neither. The team marketers rallied around a captive bred 10-year-old Augur Hawk named Taima. Don’t bother looking for her wild cousins around Puget Sound; Augur Hawks are mainly found in the arid mountains of Africa.
But scientific accuracy wasn’t really the point. In reality, the logo is a nod to one of the Seattle region’s many Native communities, the Kwakwaka’wakw nation.
How did they become the Seattle Seahawks? After Seattle received an NFL franchise in 1974, the owners held a name-the-team contest that attracted over 20,000 submissions. Around 150 contestants suggested the Seahawks out of 20,000 submissions. It was chosen as one of five finalists along with the Mariners, Evergreens, Olympics and Sockeyes.
Even as winners of SB 60, they will continue to be the Faux Fowls of Football.
