One indication of how Paul Allen is revered globally for bettering our world, beyond Seahawks

Across the Pacific Northwest we are honoring and remembering Paul Allen for what he created as owner of the Seahawks.

Keeping the team in Seattle by saving the team from moving to Southern California in 1996. Hiring the two best coaches in franchise history. Stewarding the culture that created consecutive Super Bowls, in February 2014 and ‘15. Winning the region’s only NFL championship.

“He was able to pass along the spirit that now we know, of wanting to go for it and kind of no-holes-barred,” said Pete Carroll, whom Allen sent his chief executive Tod Leiweke to Los Angeles in January 2010 to become the Seahawks’ eventual Super Bowl-winning coach.

“He was going to clear it for us to have a great chance to do great things. He wanted to win championships, and that’s what he was all about,” Carroll said of why he went for Allen’s pitch to him eight years ago. “He wasn’t going to let anything get in the way, and he was really clear about that. The message that came through was really one that I hadn’t heard in that fashion with that commitment and that spirit of it. That’s what made it even possible to even be in the conversation about it.”

Yet all Allen did as Seahawks owner before he died Monday at age 65 after complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, how beloved he was by the team’s players, coaches and staff, is just one line in his legacy internationally. If that.

That’s how much Allen changed the world far beyond the relatively nonessential business of professional football.

How great a man was Allen globally?

On my way out of England Wednesday I picked up that day’s Times of London at Heathrow Airport. The 233-year-old newspaper, so venerable and respected it’s just The Times—the first The Times in the world, in fact—wrote a two-page obituary on Allen. It spanned six columns and contained 28, detailed paragraphs about his life. It was titled “Paul Allen Software pioneer who founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in the Seventies and paved the way for the revolution in personal computers.”

The Times’ tribute to Allen had eight words in it about him owning the Seahawks. Eight. Total. The reference was in passing, at the end of the 19th paragraph: “He also bought sports teams, including the Seattle Seahawks (American football) and the Portland Trail Blazers (basketball).”

We rightfully are going on for what Allen did for our region by buying owning its football team. Yet Allen’s far more meaningful impact was that he made the world better.

He pioneered personal computing with Gates He eventually spent $2 billion of his massive wealth (estimated by Forbes to be $20 billion in 2017) on philanthropic causes.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle’s South Lake Union section of downtown he largely revitalized before Amazon got there will serve scientists, researchers and thus people in everyday life for generations. Allen spent $100 million to start his Institute for Brain Science in 2015. It’s an open-source center of research. Its shared information continually spawns ideas projects around the world that advance brain and cell science.

That’s just one example of how Allen will continue changing the world, long after his death. He also funded advancements in ocean health, in preserving wildlife and natural resources, for finding solutions to global warming, for new ways of air-launching satellites into space.

And more.

That’s going to touch tens of millions, potentially billions, more people than football does.

As for the game, the inevitable next question for the Seahawks is: What’s next? Who will own them now?

As we’ve discussed here this week, his sister Jody Allen has been the vice chair of Paul Allen’s First & Goal Inc. That’s the company he formed to run the Seahawks when he bought it 32 years ago to keep it in Seattle. The Microsoft Corp. co-founder bought the Seahawks when previous owner Ken Behring was about to move the team to Anaheim, and in fact had already moved Seahawks’ offices there in February 1996.

Jody Allen has long been thought to eventually gain a more visible ownership role with the Seahawks.

The NFL this week declined through league spokesman Brian McCarthy NFL Network’s request for comment on a succession plan of Seahawks’ ownership, “out of respect for Mr. Allen and his family.”

Paul Allen had to, per NFL conditions of team ownership, have filed a succession plan with the league beyond him being the Seahawks’ owner. The league requires owners to keep those succession plans updated. So there is indeed a plan.

The Seahawks have had no comment on what it is, in the days since Allen’s death hours after the team returned from its win on Sunday over Oakland in London.

Bill Hilf, the chief executive officer of Allen’s Vulcan company, said this in a statement Vulcan released Monday “on behalf of Vulcan Inc., the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers, Stratolaunch Systems, the Allen Institute and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence”:

“Paul thoughtfully addressed how the many institutions he founded and supported would continue after he was no longer able to lead them. This isn’t the time to deal in those specifics as we focus on Paul’s family. We will continue to work on furthering Paul’s mission and the projects he entrusted to us. There are no changes imminent for Vulcan, the teams, the research institutes or museums.”

Carroll was asked Tuesday about the Seahawks’ succession plan of ownership.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s time to be engaging into that conversation. We’re more into the conversation about recognizing what just took place and how to respect Paul and his desires and all of that.” said Carroll, who at 67 is two years older than Allen. “There’s plenty of time to talk about all that stuff and it’s not even a factor in our minds. I understand the interest and all that. There will be plenty of time.

“I don’t know how our fans couldn’t be assured that we’re on course. Nothing’s changing. Paul wouldn’t want us to do anything different than what we’re doing, which is to go for it and to represent in every way that we can until you can’t. We’re going to go for it in that fashion.”

The coach immersed in the day to day of football game planning, leading players and assistants and staff—typical ball—appreciates what Allen did for the world beyond the Seahawks. Beyond sport.

“I’m going to miss the spirit of his vision,” Carroll said. “Look at what he’s stood for. Look at what he’s done and look at all of the extraordinary, amazing places he’s taken us to because he could and because it was there to be challenged. Whether it’s in space or whether it’s under the ocean or whether it’s in the farthest reaches of the globe in chasing diseases and freeing animals and saving elephants and all the amazing things that he stood for, it’s just being around an amazing individual like that, that had that kind of vision.

“It never was about the resources. It never was about the amounts of things. It was about the challenge of discovery and stuff that was so great. And it was so much fun to be associated with. I haven’t been very fortunate to be around anybody like that, of that nature and so I feel very fortunate.

“I’ll miss the heck out of him.”

This story was originally published October 18, 2018 at 4:09 PM.