SEATTLE WHO? FLYING UNDER THE RADAR SEAHAWKS MIGHT BE CARRYING THE TAG OF THE NFL'S MOST ANONYMOUS TEAM, BUT THAT SHOULD CHANGE SHOULD THEY WIN NFC CROWN SUNDAY.

Byline: Billy Witz Staff Writer

Seattle tailback Shaun Alexander might be the MVP of the NFL, but that doesn't qualify him as big man on campus. When Alexander went to a Sonics game during the off-season, he was approached by a giddy fan who told him he couldn't wait to go home and tell his buddies he'd met Tiki Barber.

A couple years ago, Alexander was followed by a film crew while he waited on tables at an International House of Pancakes. As he took orders, few customers made the connection between the guy carrying the pigskin and the one carrying the pigs-in-a-blanket.

Such anonymity might not last long.

If Seattle can beat visiting Carolina in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday, Alexander and the rest of the Seahawks will be headed where they're sure to get noticed - Super Bowl XL.

The Seahawks, who are enjoying the best season since they came into the NFL in 1976, had won 11 in a row before losing a meaningless season-ending finale at Green Bay. They have the NFL's leading rusher in Alexander, the NFC's top-rated quarterback in Matt Hasselbeck and a defense that leads the league in sacks.

But remaking a reputation isn't easy for a team that operates from the margin of the map and was on national TV just twice - and against bad teams, the Texans and Eagles, at that.

Seeing is believing, hence the skeptics.

``I don't think we get the respect that you do (in other parts of the country) because I don't think people think of the West Coast as football,'' said receiver Joe Jurevicius, who has played on Super Bowl teams with Tampa Bay and the New York Giants.

``We've been doing great things all year, yet we still have doubters. That's frustrating. But on the other hand, you know what? Everybody who is saying we're not a legitimate football team, this and that, are being proved wrong.''

Slapping a tag on the Seahawks isn't easy. Most NFL teams come with an identity - the Packers are the embodiment of Brett Favre, the Raiders of Al Davis and the nouveau Patriots of Bill Belichick. The Bears and Steelers get their zeitgeist from their city's working-class roots.

Even the Saints, Cardinals and Bengals, like it or not, carry the burden of years of futility.

Until now, though, the most distinguishing characteristic of the Seahawks' 30-year history in the NFL is that ... well, they really don't have any.

They have been as indistinguishable as the color of their uniform. Which, is it, blue-green? Or green with a hint of blue?

The Seahawks' win over Washington last week was their first in the playoffs since 1984, snapping the longest current streak in the NFL. Yet they haven't been that bad, either. Only once since 1982 has Seattle won less than six games.

``I live downtown in a 10th-floor condo over Elliott Bay and this is a gorgeous part of the country,'' said Steve Raible, an original Seahawk who is now a TV news anchor and the team's play-by-play man.

``But on a lot of days, I look out the window and it's really gray and monotone and dull-looking, and that seems to be the best description of the team for a lot of those years. It was kind of gray and not real exciting.''

It wasn't like that when the Seahawks arrived. The city was clamoring to be considered major league and it embraced a bunch of rookies and castoffs, who quickly established themselves as gutty underdogs, thanks to scrambling left-handed quarterback Jim Zorn and receiver Steve Largent, who was small, slow and always open.

The Seahawks got better, if less endearing, during the Ground Chuck era in the mid-80s. Chuck Knox took Seattle to the playoffs four times in six years with a game plan that was as frumpy as his sound bytes.

It wasn't the greatest show on turf - the offense revolved around Curt Warner, not Kurt Warner - but fans turned the Kingdome into the loudest stadium in the NFL. So loud that the league allowed officials to penalize the home team for delay of game for excessive noise.

That prompted the team to retire the No. 12, in honor of 12th man, the fans.

Then for nearly two decades, neither the fans nor the Seahawks made much noise. Tom Flores tried to remake the Seahawks into the Raiders North and Dennis Erickson tried to make them into another sort of renegade, the University of Miami. In between, Ken Behring, who had bought the team from the founding Nordstrom Family, tried to move the Seahawks to Anaheim.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen stepped in to buy the team, keeping it in Seattle, and after the 1998 season lured Mike Holmgren from Green Bay.

The turnaround hardly happened overnight. The relationship between Holmgren and president Bob Whitsitt, who also ran the Portland Trail Blazers for Allen, deteriorated. Allen settled the dispute by firing Whitsitt and hiring Tim Ruskell, who had helped build winners in Tampa Bay and Atlanta.

Linebacker Lofa Tatupu, the rookie from USC who was considered a reach in the second round, was the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the Year. Jurevicius, a free agent, has caught 10 touchdown passes, and Pro Bowl tackle Walter Jones, a perennial late arrival in training camp, was on time with a new contract.

Several players with character or off-the-field problems were jettisoned with willing role players brought in to replace them.

``The locker room is very positive,'' Holmgren said. ``I would say that chemistry in the locker room has allowed us to win a couple of games this year that maybe we would have lost last year.''

After a crushing 20-17 overtime loss at Washington, in which Josh Brown's game-winning field-goal attempt hit an upright, the Seahawks rebounded with a win at St. Louis, which had beaten them three times last season, including the playoffs.

The players then began to believe, and soon the fans followed. Qwest Field - where the Seahawks are 9-0 this season, including the playoff win against Washington - became the type of home-field advantage that the Kingdome had been, the crowd helping force the Giants into 11 false start penalties.

``It's just nuts,'' Raible said of the atmosphere this week. ``Everybody is talking about the Seahawks.''

Still, news of the Seahawks renaissance has traveled slowly.

Seattle is the most remote team of the NFL's 32 teams, a two-hour flight from the nearest teams in the Bay Area, which prompted FOX analyst Jimmy Johnson to joke that the Seahawks played in Southern Alaska.

Perhaps he's not far off.

``It feels like a foreign city,'' said Arizona receivers coach Mike Wilson. ``Don't get me wrong - I played at Washington State - but you look at the NFL and you think Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, then you go to Seattle and it seems like you're trying to get to Tokyo.''

In another two weeks that may change. Consider a win Sunday and another two weeks later in Detroit - it wouldn't be a bad way for the Seahawks to introduce themselves to the world.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Matt Hasselbeck has helped point the Seattle Seahawks in the right direction - into Sunday's NFC Championship Game.

Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

(2) Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander, left, have helped Seattle to a 13-3 regular-season mark and the best record in the NFC, yet the Seahawks remain mired in anonymity outside the city.

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Box:

NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME