Theo, I'll give you the reason why people like you have a SEAL fetish. Back in the early 90's, the cold war had just ended, and the military was beginning it's transformation from a cold war army to global military capable of projecting power anywhere on the planet.  To do this, they needed less army personell and more Navy personell. However, the Navy had difficulty recruiting the numbers they needed. This was because Army, Marine, and Air Force ads were interesting, and could catch the viewers attention. In the army you could drive a tank, in the Air Force you could fly a plane, and in the Marine Corps you could be part of something greater than yourself, or so the ads portrayed them. The Navy really didn't have much to show/offer, and the most accurate Navy recruiting commercial back then would have been of sailors drinking coffee, chipping paint, and working in confined spaces for 6 months at a time. So the Navy decided to put SEALs in these ads. And what do you know, it worked. SEAL publicicity continued to skyrocket after that, and the SEAL mythology was created. It's not unlike how the SAS mythos was created after the 1980 Iranian embassy siege.

 

Having said that, both are excellent units. Comparisons between the two units have to be taken in the right context. It has been mentioned, that they are both different units with different tasks. A more apt comparison would be that of the SBS and SEALs. You also have to remember that as queer as it sounds, the SAS is a tier one unit and the SEALs are not. It is a more experienced unit (due to the experience of the individual operators, not how long the two units have been around). It is also a more selective unit. Soldiers who attend SAS selection have years of experience, and were chosen to go to selection because of their stellar performance in their previous regiments. Whereas 90% of SEAL recruits come from SEAL challenge contracts or volunteers in basic or A school. In otherwords, brand new sailors with NO experience, however fit they may be. The SEALS are also 10 times larger than the SAS. The SAS is also a better funded unit. The SAS I believe is anywhere from 200-400 soldiers (correct me if I'm wrong Bob), and one of the reasons for the unit's excellence is that MoD spends well over 400 million dollars on the unit, the most expensive regiment in the British army. SEALs, however, are the red headed stepchildren of SOCOM, and probably recieve less funding than their peers in SOCOM and JSOC because of it.  Not all SOF's are created equal, and these things must be taken into account when a comparison is made.