seahawksobamaSeahawks fans are so loud President Barack Obama thinks that some cheating is going on.

As customary for teams that win the Super Bowl, the world champion Seattle Seahawks visited the White House Wednesday to meet with Obama, who congratulated the Hawks for their historic 2013-14 season.

During his short speech, he mentioned the record-setting, ear-splitting noise at Century Link Field.

“Y’all have that stadium that is kind of cheating because it’s so loud,” Obama said today. “You hired some physicists.”

Then, Obama referenced Microsoft.

“You know, there are a lot of really smart people at Microsoft and up in those places that can design these things,” he said.

Microsoft employees gathered at the company campus in January to show their support for the Seahawks.
Microsoft employees gathered at the company campus in January to show their support for the Seahawks.

Obama is right — sort of. When CenturyLink Field was built back in 2002, Seahawks owner and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen wanted to recreate the feeling he had as a kid attending college games at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium, which has also set noise records of its own.

So architects designed CenturyLink with a roof that covers about 70 percent of the attendees — protecting most fans from rain, but perhaps more importantly, bouncing a ton of crowd noise back to the field. They also installed hard surface materials that did not absorb sound. In addition, CenturyLink was built on a smaller site than other NFL stadiums, which forced architects to push seats closer together.

Anyways, it’s pretty funny that Obama brought up Microsoft. I guess all you Microsofties have bragging rights over those at Amazon and Boeing — after all, even Mr. Obama thinks you’re really smart.

Obama also referenced the contributions that the Seahawks make off the field and mentioned owner Paul Allen’s funding to help support brain trauma research. Obama actually asked Allen if he wanted to say a few words during today’s ceremony after head coach Pete Carroll spoke, but the Microsoft co-founder politely declined.

Obama also brought up the post-Super Bowl celebration in Seattle.

“There’s actually video of a huge group of Seahawks fans interrupting their celebration to wait for the walk sign before crossing the intersection,” he said. “That’s Seattle for you.”

Check out the Seahawks Twitter feed for more from today’s ceremony, and see Obama’s full speech at the bottom of this post.

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