Back In My Day, Everything Was Made Of Metal

by A.J. Coltrane 

Originally this post was going to be about how much I liked this lunchbox as a kid. The Seahawks were a brand-new team, and I got a brand-new lunchbox to take to school. 

Then I got to looking at it closely — does anything seem weird? 

That’s right. The Seahawks are on the NFC side of the lunchbox. As far as I could remember, the Seahawks were always an AFC West team. As a matter of fact, it kind of bugged me that when the divisions realigned in 2002 the Seahawks became an NFC West team. (I’m still getting used to it, really.) 

So what happened?  

As it turns out, 2002 was the beginning of the second time Seattle called the NFC West “home.” 

As an expansion franchise, the Seahawks played the 1976 season in the NFC West, along with the 49ers, Saints, Falcons, and the L.A. Rams. 

In 1977 Tampa Bay moved to the NFC Central and the Seahawks replaced them in the AFC West.  It must have made more sense to group Seattle with Denver, LA, and San Diego. (Tampa Bay got stuck with Chicago, Green Bay, Detroit, and Minnesota. The Buccaneers winter road trips just got a hell of a lot less enjoyable:  San Diego in December — or Chicago, where would *you* rather go play? I’d also think that, as an NFL player looking for women…  the ladies of L.A. or the women of Minnesota? … No contest.) 

Most likely, I got the lunchbox prior to the 1976 season, before school started.  The NFL had just seen a classic matchup in the Super Bowl:  the Steelers defeated the Cowboys 21-17.  I was always a Staubach fan.  I thought the kids who were Bradsaw fans were just frontrunners. 

The 1975 league MVP?   Fran Tarkenton.

Here’s an interesting piece from Collector’s Weekly about lunchboxes.