As a lifelong Seattle Seahawks fan, I remember screaming myself silly in 2006, when the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl for the very first time.

Sunday night, the Seahawks won the NFC Championship over the San Fransisco 49ers, and I again screamed myself silly.  This time, though, my kids could join me in the cheering.

Then Richard Sherman gave an on-field, post-game interview to Erin Andrews, and I swear Facebook and Twitter broke themselves over the collective moral wedgie everyone got when Sherman smack-talked 49ers’ receiver Michael Crabtree.  Sherman and Crabtree apparently have had a rivalry going since the offseason, and after that very last play, Crabtree shoved Sherman in the helmet.  Little wonder that in that first interview, with emotions and adrenaline running high, Sherman cut loose and called Crabtree a “mediocre receiver” and himself “the best corner in the game.”

And social media promptly wet itself.

Apparently, we should all be shocked, SHOCKED, that two grown men who play professional sports have a grudge against each other, and that one of them talked smack about the other in a post-game interview.  SHOCKED, I tell you!

The comments I saw were varied and ranged from things like, “What a classless jerk,” to “Now I will REALLY root for the Broncos,” to “act like you’ve been there before,” to “you can’t talk like that unless you can back it up” to words like “thug” and “ghetto.”

And there, I put my foot down.  I am so damned tired of being called a “racist” at every turn because I simply disagree with someone’s opinion and that person happens to be of a different color than I am.  So, you don’t like how Sherman behaved after winning the game that will lead to the Super Bowl?  “Thug” and “ghetto” are REALLY the words that you want to toss around?  Really?  I cannot express how sharp my disappointment was with fellow conservatives who were casually tossing this crap around in social media.  You get tired of being called a “racist” when you disagree with President Obama?  Then don’t say things like “you can’t take the ghetto out” when you disagree with Richard Sherman’s behavior.

Besides, this is what the real racists sounded like.  Don’t get lumped in with these losers.  And Sherman graduated second in his class in high school and then graduated from Stanford.  He is no inarticulate loser.

Football is a rough, violent, sometimes bloody sport.  It is one of the last venues in America where a man’s talent speaks for him, and nothing else.  Sherman may talk smack, but the only way to shut him up is to win against him.  The 49ers failed to do that.  There is no trophy for second place in football.   Each of these playoff games is sudden death – you win or you go home.  This is not a 7 game World Series, or a 7 game NBA Finals.  This game is the be all and end all for each team.  The victor gets to go on and play again.  The loser gets to go home and try again next year.

You think Sherman should have been more gracious, more forgiving, in victory?

Have you ever SEEN a football game before?

News flash: not all football players are Tim Tebow.  Or even a Russell Wilson.  These are men who are paid large sums of money to run fast, catch a ball, and hit other men.  Hard.  These are not men hired to express articulate opinions, do their team’s PR, or treat each opposing teams nicely so as not to hurt feelings.  This is how football is.  It is a rough sport.  It is unlike any other sport that we have.  If you don’t like it, or how these men play, don’t watch it.  But do not expect that you will hear niceness and graciousness in the middle of a heated rivalry, or demand that someone “act like you’ve been there before” when you’ve never been there yourself.  Do not ask rough men who play a rough sport to be anything more or less than rough men who play a rough sport.

We have all let our adrenaline talk for us at one point or another in our lives.  It’s a good thing that most of the time, those moments don’t end up on national television.

And I am going to unapologetically keep cheering for my Seahawks.