Status quo at top: Seahawks extend Tacoma’s Chuck Arnold as team president through 2027
Status remains quite quo atop the Seahawks franchise.
Months after she gave coach Pete Carroll a contract extension through 2025 to continue as executive vice president in charge of all football operations, team chair Jody Allen has awarded Tacoma native Chuck Arnold with an extension through 2027 to continue leading the Seahawks’ business side as their president.
The team announced the extension for Arnold on Wednesday.
Allen had promoted Arnold, a graduate of Curtis High School, in 2018 from Seahawks chief operating officer to president in September 2018.
“Grateful and excited to continue leading the Seahawks organization,” Arnold posted on his Twitter account online Wednesday. “I’m thankful to Jody Allen for her support and for entrusting me to continue serving this great franchise, the community, and the 12s #GoHawks”
Allen now has Carroll, Arnold and Seattle general manager John Schneider under contract to lead the Seahawks at least through 2025. In January the team extended Schneider’s GM contract through the 2027 NFL draft.
Carroll is on track to become the oldest coach in league history with Seattle. The oldest full-time NFL coaches are George Halas and Marv Levy. Both coached until they were 72. Carroll will be 74 at the end of his new deal.
Arnold replaced Peter McLoughlin. The Seahawks did not renew McLoughlin’s contract to be their president and chief executive when it expired after eight years with the team, including him raising the Vince Lombardi trophy on the podium and field following Super Bowl 48 in February 2014.
“Chuck continues to do an exceptional job working with and supporting the football operation while assuring that the entire Seahawks organization remains an engaged and invested community leader unafraid to tackle tough challenges in our region,” Jody Allen said in statement the team issued Wednesday.
“Stability, quality, and consistency of leadership is a key ingredient to our continued success and winning culture. I remain excited for the future of this organization both on and off the field.”
Stability and consistency of leadership remain a competitive edge for the Seahawks within the tumultuous NFL. Allen inherited command of the franchise from her late brother. Paul Allen died in 2018 at age 65 after complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Seattle has made the playoffs in eight of the last nine seasons. It’s nine times in the 11 years since Paul Allen hired Carroll, then Schneider, to run the football side in January 2010.
Arnold went from Tacoma and Curtis High to graduate from Washington State University. He began his career with the Seahawks when Russell Wilson was 5 years old. Arnold started as an intern in the team’s public relations department in 1994.
He then worked in Seahawks’ ticket sales and became their director of ticket operations in 1997. Arnold became vice president of sales and marketing for the team in 2010, then its chief operating officer in 2013.
“I don’t know if I could even imagine being an intern,” Arnold said when he became Seahawks president in 2018, “and now I’m here.
“I can remember skipping church to watch Seahawks games growing up.”
In the past year as Seattle and the world fought the coronavirus pandemic, Arnold led the Seahawks and its operating company First & Goal, Inc., to support utilizing Lumen Field’s stadium and event center space to host an army field hospital and blood donation center and make more than 120,000 emergency meals that were distributed throughout the Seattle area. Last month, Lumen Field partnered with the City of Seattle to open the country’s largest civilian-led community COVID-19 vaccination site.
Arnold also oversaw the Seahawks creating a vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion. Karen Wilkins-Mickey recently became the first to fill that new role with the team.
This story was originally published April 14, 2021 at 2:43 PM.
