EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsSEATTLE -- It's one of Matt Hasselbeck's favorite memories from his 10-year run as the Seattle Seahawks' quarterback, and it still gives him the feels more than two decades later."I'm getting goosebumps now," he said while recalling the moment in a phone interview with ESPN last month.It was January of 2006, as the Seahawks were about to take the field for the NFC Championship Game against the Carolina Panthers at what was then called Qwest Field. No one knew ahead of time who had been selected to raise the 12 Flag, which happens right before kickoff of every Seattle home game.After Carrie Underwood performed the national anthem, Hasselbeck heard the familiar orchestral music that signals the start of the ceremony. He looked high above the south end zone to see who was doing the honors.It was the team's owner and literal savior, Paul Allen."When they played that song and then he comes on and he was fired up, that was like ... let's go!" Hasselbeck said. "And then the crowd reaction to it, raising the flag and his reaction, it was really awesome. It was an incredible thing."The scene hit as hard as it did for Hasselbeck and the packed stadium largely because of what Allen meant to Seattle, having rescued the Seahawks from a near-relocation to Southern California when he bought the team in 1997 from former owner Ken Behring. But also because it was a rare case of Allen stepping into a spotlight that he mostly avoided. His sister, Jody Allen, shunned attention even more when she took control of the team in the wake of his death in 2018.The Allen family's tenure as the Seahawks owners ended Thursday with the closing of the franchise's $9.612 billion sale to a group led by Sun Microsoft co-founder and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. The proceeds are being donated to charity in accordance with Paul Allen's wishes, a colossal act of philanthropy that will be part of the family's legacy as Seahawks owners, along with saving professional football in Seattle -- and winning.Over the past 29 years under the Allens, the Seahawks reached the Super Bowl four times, won it twice and made the playoffs 17 times. Their 268 regular-season wins in that span are fifth most in the NFL.Khosla will bring to his new role the expertise that made him a titan of the tech and venture capital worlds. But the Khosla family -- with Vinod serving as chair, wife Neeru as controlling owner and their son Neil as vice chair -- would do well to follow the script that was laid out during one of the NFL's most successful ownership tenures: trust your decision-makers and supply them with the resources they need to win."We are honored to be entrusted as the next stewards of the Seattle Seahawks," Vinod Khosla said in July when the deal was reached. "We look forward to building on the winning legacy Paul Allen created and to earning the trust of the Seahawks organization and fans everywhere."What can the Khoslas learn from their predecessors?"I think just how to walk that really, really difficult line that sometimes owners have of ... really empowering your people to win, of really making sure that you're in the role you're in of engaging them and growing them and developing them, but not making it about yourself," said Brock Huard, who played quarterback (1999-2001, 2004) for the Seahawks under Paul Allen and began co-hosting a radio show on Seattle Sports 710-AM in 2009."That's what Paul and Jody and their teams did. They never made it about Paul and Jody. They made it about the players and the coaches and the championships, while all the while pushing and demanding to never stand pat."PAUL ALLEN RARELY attended league meetings with his fellow owners -- Jody Allen sometimes skipped them as well -- but when the Microsoft co-founder would show up, his presence was felt."There's always somebody that's a little richer, a little more powerful, had a little more going for him than you do ... Paul Allen was that guy," said Steve Raible, an original Seahawks receiver and the team's long-time radio voice.The Seahawks became a first-class organization during his ownership tenure and remained one under his sister in part because of their willingness to spend their immense wealth and arm the organization with resources.In 1999, Paul Allen cut the check for an eight-year, $32 million contract that pried Mike Holmgren from the Green Bay Packers, which made him the league's highest-paid head coach with an annual average that doubled what he was making. Allen went big-name hunting again in 2010, luring Pete Carroll away from USC with another huge-for-the-time deal -- a reported $35 million over seven years.Hasselbeck recalls one year under Holmgren in which the team traveled in "two of the most ridiculous airplanes of all time.""They were so nice," he said. "The bathroom near my seat was nicer than the powder room in my house -- and bigger." Allen's purse strings were never an issue when it came to enticing free agents to come to Seattle. But the city's remoteness at one point was a factor. That started to change in 2007, when he began building a new 200,000-square-foot training facility on the shores of Lake Washington. The Virginia Mason Athletic Center, with its state-of-the-art amenities and picturesque setting, helped turn the Seahawks from an NFL outpost to a destination. Allen spent $60 million to build it in 2007, not counting the prior costs to buy and decontaminate the land.This year, the Seahawks ranked fourth on the NFLPA report cards, with high marks for everything but Lumen Field's artificial turf. They received their second straight A-minus in the team travel category after C grades in 2023 and 2024.What changed? Jody Allen splurging for a new team charter -- a Boeing 747 equipped with enough lie-flat seats for every player on the 53-man roster.It was in keeping with the Allens' willingness to spend money and a question they would often ask in pursuit of winning: "What do you need?" The Seahawks have paid off the investment by going an NFL-best 15-2 on the road over coach Mike Macdonald's two seasons.The organization received an A-minus this year for the VMAC's training room, which underwent a significant renovation in 2025 after players voiced concerns via the survey. The Seahawks have made plans to further expand their headquarters in the coming years, something that will now be overseen by the Khoslas."[They're] committed at that facility to chase edges, to give them every edge imaginable," Huard said of the franchise under the Allens, "whether that's mentally, whether that's physically, whether that's emotionally, whether that's the commitment to science technology and development ... to constantly push the edge, constantly push the evolution off 'How can we do this better?' That takes resources many times, and I don't think that there was ever hardly a 'no.'"The Khoslas will face significant investment decisions in the coming years. Super Bowl-winning quarterback Sam Darnold will be eligible next offseason for an extension that could be worth well over $50 million per year in new money. The NFLPA has been lobbying for grass playing surfaces in every NFL stadium, and the union made another push this summer when several World Cup venues -- including Lumen Field -- temporarily installed it per FIFA requirements.When asked on X in early August about possibly switching to grass for good, Vinod Khosla responded: "I'd defer to people at the @seahawks who know better than me. The team that got us the Super Bowl."THE ALLENS WERE rarely heard from publicly, but they were more involved than many assumed based on the low profiles they both kept.In 2017, as the Seahawks were coming off a 10-5-1 season in which they finished first in the NFC West, they made a curious addition to the organization. Former Cleveland Browns head coach Mike Pettine wasn't hired to be part of Carroll's defensive staff. In fact, it wasn't Carroll's decision to hire him.Pettine had been brought on as a consultant at Paul Allen's behest."To me, that speaks to that curiosity that Paul had," Huard said. "That, 'No, we're not going to let anybody be totally comfortable. We're always going to push and demand and challenge and want that growth and development. I think that's such a part of that tech world that he came from. That growth and development. Evolve, evolve, evolve."I don't think Pete necessarily loved it. I don't think he hated it. I think he knew that he was being challenged, that another set of eyes was going to evaluate the whole process and scheme and all of it and give Paul and the ownership team some feedback."The Allens didn't pick players or demand that certain ones see the field. When Jody Allen would sit in the front row of the draft room in recent years, she was there as an observer, having met with general manager John Schneider beforehand to get a feel for the team's plans, just as Paul Allen had done. They trusted their decision-makers -- until they determined it was time to find new ones.It was Paul Allen, after all, that decided to hit the reset button in 2010, firing coach Jim L. Mora after one season and also pushing out general manager Tim Ruskell in favor of a Carroll-Schneider pairing. And it was Jody Allen who decided to replace the most successful coach in franchise history when she moved Carroll into a nominal "advisor" role in 2024, paving the way for Schneider to tab Macdonald as Carroll's successor.Paul Allen had Schneider evaluate players via a written report after every game. Macdonald met with Jody Allen via Zoom every Monday during the season."The thing that sticks out to me about Jody was her enthusiasm about where she wanted our team to be and our franchise to be as a vision of the Seattle Seahawks," Macdonald said. "That was during our interview process. Honestly, that's really where I was like, 'OK, this is something I feel really strongly about that I feel like I could help create that.' So everything, I think, has been through that lens. It's very clear what type of team she wants, and she's been incredibly supportive. ... She's been awesome."Others who worked for Allen described her ability to cut through the superfluous and get to the core of an issue."Just clarity of vision," Schneider said when asked what he'll appreciate most about the Allens' ownership style, "and understanding of where we want to go, what we want the organization to look like, how we're going to represent the organization and the 12s."As Schneider spoke to the crowd at Lumen Field during the Seahawks' championship celebration, he noted that he as well as several of the players behind him had lost their fathers in recent months, describing them as "angels" who had watched over the team that season."With those angels, we know that Paul Allen has watched over us," Schneider said, raising a red plastic cup before turning his eyes to Jody Allen. "And Jody, Paul would be so proud of you the way you've led this organization and allowed us to be where we are."Allen, in typical fashion, didn't speak during the celebration. Save for press releases, her only public comments during her nearly-eight seasons in control of the team came as the Seahawks were being presented with the George Halas Trophy after beating the Los Angeles Rams in last season's NFC Championship Game.The Khosla family looks to be more publicly available than the Paul and Jody Allen -- with Vinod and Neal active on social media and having occasionally interacted with fans on X since the sale was announced. But it has been clear they want to build upon the legacy of the Allens."We are honored and excited to begin this next chapter," the Khosla family said in a statement Thursday. "The Seahawks are known for their championship culture, winning football, and a deep connection to the 12s and the Pacific Northwest. We look forward to engaging with the Seattle community and building upon the legacy and traditions that make this franchise so special."JODY ALLEN RAISED the 12 Flag for the last time as an owner before the NFC Championship Game in January, just as her brother had done 20 years earlier and before the Seahawks' other title game appearances in 2014 and 2015. She was joined by a trio of ex-Seahawks -- Michael Bennett, Cliff Avril and Hasselbeck."Literally one of my favorite moments ever was watching Paul Allen raise the flag," Hasselbeck said, "so to be up there was special."When asked on X if he would raise the 12 flag when the Seahawks open the 2026 season in Seattle on Wednesday against the Patriots (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC), Vinod Khosla said "I'd love to have Jody to do it."Khosla said in August his family is "incredibly lucky" for the rare opportunity to buy a team on the heels of a Super Bowl win. The goal, he said, is to get another one.Said Hasselbeck: "The standard has been set."
