The Sale Of The Seahawks …

They say that defense wins championships.  Well, Spain demonstrated why that just may be the case in this year’s FIFA World Cup.  Spain shut out France 2-0 in the game; and obviously, a team cannot lose a game if the ball never goes into their net.  However, there is more than that.  I would need to see a replay of the game to be certain of this next statement:

• I don’t think the Spanish goalkeeper needed to make a save that was even marginally difficult in the entire game.

The Spanish defense was a combination of swarming and smothering; the French team had plenty of time with the ball seeking to attack and get meaningful shots at the goal, but the attacks were rebuffed and all the attempted shots by the French were meager at best.  This defensive showing by the Spanish team is not unusual; so far in this year’s World Cup tournament:

• Spain has played 7 games and won them all.
• Spain has yielded only 1 goal in those 7 games (to Belgium last week)

Switching gears …  It appears that the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks will be sold for the record price of $9.61B pending the approval of the 32 NFL owners.  The purchasing group is fronted by Vinod Khosla who comes by his estimated worth of about $14B (according to Forbes) as one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems.  [Aside:  Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle about 15 years ago for $4.5B.]

The seller in this transaction is the estate of Paul Allen – – a co-founder of Microsoft.  In Paul Allen’s will, he specified that the Seahawks – – and the Portland Trailblazers of the NBA which he also owned – – would be sold and that almost all of the money generated from those sales would go to charities specified in his will and would be distributed to those charities by the Paul G. Allen Foundation.

Vinod Khosla is currently a minority owner of the San Francisco 49ers; obviously, one of the conditions for having this sale approved by the league owners is that he will divest himself of that ownership stake in the Niners.  I don’t know how one might go about seeking a buyer for such an asset; but somehow, I suspect that will be a minor hurdle to cross for M. Khosla.

The fact that the Seahawks are the reigning Super Bowl Champions obviously did not deflate the total amount of this transaction.  The sale price of $9.61B is not only a record price for an NFL franchise; it also represents a 59% increase over the previous high-water mark for an NFL franchise sale set by the Washington Commanders just two years ago at $6.05B.

Paul Allen acquired the Seahawks’ franchise in 1997 for $194M, which seems like  pittance today.  However, there was some intrigue associated with Allen’s purchase of the team.  The owner at the time was not from Seattle and wanted to transplant the team to Anaheim; one of his “problems” with Seattle had been the lack of a new stadium there; the Kingdome had gone past its sell-by date.

Paul Allen made one TV ad about his purchase intentions.  Two weeks before a referendum that would authorize a new stadium, he told the folks in Seattle, WA that he would buy the team and keep it in Seattle if and only if they voted to build the new stadium.  That was it; no fanfare and no hype; just a simple statement of the conditions underpinning his purchase decision.  Here is his “message” to the folks in Seattle:

“When I said yes to help save the Seahawks, I meant that I’d do my part in building something for the future, personally and financially. If you vote yes, I’ll do what it takes to make the new stadium and exhibition center a success. I stand by that commitment.

“But if you say no, that means no for me too, because I’m not going to do this without you. When I said that you’ll have the final say, I meant it. Together, we can leave something for future generations.”

Here is a link to an article from the Seattle Times back in 2013 that will give you the details and the maneuverings involved in Allen’s purchase of the team and its continued residence in Seattle.  I commend it to  your reading.

Finally, since much of today’s rant has been about large sums of money, I’ll close with this from J. Paul Getty who had a few bucks of his own:

“If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………