Jody Allen has ‘normal’ meeting with Pete Carroll, Schneider, watches Seahawks play again

Jody Allen recently held a midseason meeting with Pete Carroll and John Schneider.

Sunday, she was to be upstairs again above Lumen Field, watching her Seahawks play the Arizona Cardinals.

Seahawks fans and many around the Pacific Northwest have asked how involved Allen is in the Seahawks’ football operations. She became the team’s owner during the 2018 season, when her brother and Seahawks owner Paul Allen died of cancer at age 65.

Jody Allen is the Seahawks chair, chair of Vulcan, Inc., and trustee of the Paul G. Allen trust. She attends Seahawks home games and many road games, watching from a suite.

Recently she led a midseason meeting with Carroll, the Seahawks coach, executive vice president and highest football authority, plus general manager John Schneider. They discussed the state of the 3-6 Seahawks.

On Friday, Carroll, 70, emphasized how normal that meeting with Allen was — that it was not at all out of the ordinary or a reaction to the team being in last place past the midpoint of this season, after making the playoffs eight of the last nine years.

Asked what he’d heard from Allen, Carroll said: ”We communicate. She really communicates a lot through John, for the most part. Send messages once in while, and talk once in a while.

“We had our middle-of-the-year meeting, like we always do. Pretty normal.

“It is normal.”

It shall be normal, then.

Normal thus far has meant Carroll in charge, with Schneider’s path co-leading the team in lock-step with the coach’s.

It’s also meant Carroll’s daily and routine interactions with ownership staying directly with Bert Kolde. Kolde is Allen’s right-hand man. He is the team’s vice chair and the executive vice president of sports strategy and operations for Vulcan, Inc.

Vulcan is the Seattle-based company Paul Allen founded to oversee his business activities and philanthropic efforts. After he pioneered personal computing and founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, Allen eventually spent $2 billion of his massive wealth (estimated by Forbes to be $20 billion in 2017) on philanthropic causes.

Kolde is in the Seahawks’ locker room and watches Carroll’s, Russell Wilson’s and others’ press conferences following games, home and away. The week after Paul Allen’s death in 2018, Carroll said Kolde is the man he talks to about ownership issues and interests. Kolde was that for Carroll during Paul Allen’s ownership of the team, as well.

In December 2018, two months after Paul Allen’s death, Jody Allen announced the Seahawks had given Carroll a two-year contract extension believed to be worth $11 million per year through 2021. That married Carroll’s contract ending to Schneider’s. In 2016 Paul Allen had give the GM a five-year extension through 2021.

In November 2020, Carroll acknowledged Allen had quietly extended the coach’s contract again, through 2025. Carroll is under Seahawks contract to coach them past his 74th birthday. That would make him the oldest coach in NFL history.

“For a gesture like this from Jody Allen and the organization, and all, at a time when everybody is struggling and suffering and all that — I mean, it is something that has been in the works for a long time,” Carroll said in November 2020, in the middle of the pandemic and a tumultuous presidential election in the United States. “We’ve been talking, way before all the issues that have happened (in our country). So it finally came together.”

The oldest full-time coaches in NFL history are George Halas and Marv Levy. Both coached until they were 72. Carroll will be 74 at the end of his new deal.

Two months after Carroll talked about that deal, the Seahawks announced they had given Schneider a six-year extension. That has the GM under contract with Seattle through the 2027 NFL draft.

On Oct. 15, 2018, Jody Allen became the chair of the Seahawks and the trustee of the Paul G. Allen Trust. She oversees the estate her brother left. It has varied interests and pursuits, from deep sea exploration to extensive art and music collections to a space-exploration company and more.

The trust owns the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA. That makes Jody Allen the Blazers’ chair, as well.

The NFL requires team owners to file a formal succession plan with the league, but the NFL has declined to outline what that was for Allen and his Seahawks.

After Paul Allen’s death, many began speculating his sister and the estate would sell the Seahawks as part of that succession plan. But the team revealed the immediate succession plan for Seahawks ownership when it confirmed the Paul G. Allen Trust was the team’s owner and its trustee, Jody Allen, was the Seahawks’ chair.

The Seahawks were a bit part of all Allen did and owned. Any future sale, should Jody Allen or the trustees decide that (and no indications currently exist), would not come until after lawyers review all aspects and holdings of Paul Allen’s estate. Given all his varied international, philanthropic interests and formal ventures, such a review of his entire estate could take years.

For example: The Allen Institute for Brain Science is in Seattle’s South Lake Union section of downtown, largely revitalized by Allen before Amazon got there. It serves scientists, researchers and thus people in everyday life for generations. Allen spent $100 million to start his Institute for Brain Science in 2015.

Allen 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.

As part of the estate’s years-long review, Allen’s space company Stratolaunch Systems Corp, was sold in Oct. 2019.

Jody Allen has been doing more recently in sports than following the Seahawks and leading a meeting with Carroll and Schneider. She has been busier with the Trail Blazers than she would want to be.

Last week, she and the Blazers announced they have launched an investigation into the workplace conduct of general manager Neil Olshey. In a statement the NBA team said it was reviewing “concerns around workplace environment by non-player personnel at the practice facility.”