If you have to go to Detroit, there’d better be something really special waiting as a reward. And Seattle and Pittsburgh doesn’t fit that description.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the relative merits of the teams. The reality is that human beings are awfully shallow. If you doubt that, spend a week watching the prime-time television schedule and, at the end of it, try to think of anything worthwhile that you’ve learned.

We can make Pittsburgh seem pretty compelling, a task made easier by the fact the Steelers have history and a national following. But we can’t make people like Seattle, despite a truly impressive run through the playoffs.

If the Seahawks were to win this Super Bowl and another next year or even the year after, then fans would start to pay attention, because then the Hawks would be the featured game on Sunday and Monday nights four or five times a year and we’d start to get to know them.

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Right now, they’re just a team that has always disappointed and is expected to again, a team that most football fans don’t have the opportunity to pay much attention to because they don’t even see Seahawk game stories all that much.

That’s not a rip job, but the truth. If the Cowboys were in the Super Bowl, people would be talking about it everywhere. If the Indianapolis Mannings were in, that’s all anyone would talk about.

I think the game could be a great one. I’m wondering who will care.