Art Thiel

“Geno was the best he’s ever been,” said Pete Carroll. “He was ready for this game.” Said Smith: “People wrote me off. I didn’t write back.”

Russell Wilson didn’t want to be here. Pete Carroll didn’t want him to be here. Simple.

It’s official now that the industry has fallen off the edge of the flat Earth propped so long by the mythology of amateurism.

Carroll’s emphasis on the run is neither wrong nor hopeless; it helped get the Seahawks to two Super Bowls. But the system takes better players to execute it than he and Schneider had provided since then. Until, perhaps, now.

Wilson and Carroll were dug in hard on damage control regarding the steaming crater in the Seahawks' roster, true feelings disguised by the polite prevarications and mendacity that attended the run-up to the trade.

The writing has been on the wall for this moment. The Seahawks were forced to do the forbidden thing in the NFL: they traded a Hall of Fame quarterback with tread on his tires.

The NCAA response to a pivot point in the history of big-time American college athletics is a slapdash collapse that has been years in the making. The NCAA has to have known it was running a crooked shop, but refused to take substantive steps to forestall disaster.

The upshot was the nation’s best offense was held to a season low in points. It was an exercise in power and energy. As Bears coach Scott Drew offered from the post-game stage after receiving the championship trophy, he pointed over his shoulder and said, “If you’re going to war, I’m taking these guys.” He’s probably right.

The way many people, inside of baseball and outside, see the Mariners is as a hapless loser of an organization with a toxic culture that indulges a senior executive like departed CEO Kevin Mather,

Coach Carroll doesn’t have the leverage of a politician, but he has experience in one of America’s two high-profile industries with majority Black talent (the other is the NBA). He knows his material and his truths.