Art Thiel
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Longtime Seattle sports columnist. Unwinding, undeterred worder. Always drink upstream from the herd.
Articles by Art Thiel
World Cup: Crossing a Red Line
The World Cup quarterfinal match between Spain and Belgium isn’t until today. That leaves time for President Trump to find another horse’s head for the bed of his goombah, Gianni Infantino, and inspire him to overturn Belgium’s 4-1 thrash of the U.S. Monday at Seattle Stadium. It’s not over until the fat prexy cheats. If Trump can deliver an uninvited reversal of a referee’s decision that influenced one major sports event, why stop there? Surely there are others.
The Gods of Soccer have Blessed Seattle
After a professional lifetime of journalism experience in Seattle, which included national and global sports, I presumed I had seen most everything. I was not prepared for what happened Friday in ol’ Dad Yesler’s little sawmill town. The men’s World Cup came to town for a soccer match and was overwhelmed by a cultural waterfall. A shame for the Australians, unfortunate victims of a vibe measured in megatons. The soccer hordes filled Harbor Steps from First Avenue to Western Avenue.
A Host of Complications: The World Cup comes to Town this Week
You may have heard that the FIFA World Cup, a men’s soccer global tournament held every four years that celebrates itself and rapacious capitalism, is bearing down upon Seattle and 10 other U.S. cities, as well as three in Mexico and two in Canada. In these places, fans, political leaders, cops, bartenders, hotel owners and unaffiliated drivers looking for a parking space are wondering what to make of a World Cup in a world gone wayward. I claim no global soccer expertise.
Complicated: Randy Johnson comes full circle
A good case can be made that in the mid-1990s, the three best players in Major League Baseball were Mariners. Randy Johnson won the 1995 Cy Young Award as the American League’s best pitcher. In 1996, Alex Rodriguez won the American League batting title and finished second in the Most Valuable Player voting. And in 1997, Ken Griffey Jr. won the MVP award unanimously. Record numbers of historically woebegone fans, including nearly 3.2 million in 1997, watched the spectacle in the Kingdome.
Newest Seahawk: “We Goin’ Back-to-Back” Super Bowls
Pity that Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald doesn’t put a premium on ebullience as an asset in drafting players, something that his predecessor, Pete Carroll, seemed to relish. The Seattle teams from 2012 to 2016 were about one “Flounder” character short of the full “Animal House.” Talking, of course, doesn’t make a football player better. But it sure helps writers on a slow news week. Ask something off-beat of Marshawn Lynch, Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett.
Feel Good: Is this really Seattle Sports?
If you, Seattle sports fan, feel lately as if you’ve been taking in local developments at the pace of a waterfall, welcome to the, well, glub. Traditionally the final week in March features the Mariners’ home opener and a flame-out by Gonzaga in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The third-seeded Zags already delivered, losing to 11th-seeded Texas in the second round Saturday.
Salty Seahawks get their Swaggy On
The previous time the Seahawks held a Super Bowl victory parade, Marshawn Lynch ignited the thousands when he stood on the engine hood of the jitney he was riding, grabbed a bottle of Fireball handed him by a fan, and took a swig that evoked Snoqualmie Falls. Always a man ’bout that action. Wednesday at the newest Super Bowl celebration, Ernest Jones was a man about words. Two, specifically.
Out on a High Note: The Paul Allen Seahawks Era Ends Sunday
From a Seattle perspective, the Seahawks’ first Super Bowl appearance in 2006 was a disaster. The crowd in Ford Field was anything but neutral, cheering on a favorite Detroit hometown dude, Jerome Bettis, with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Officiating calls were so lopsided that, years later, the lead ref confessed to the errors. Steelers rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger finished nine of 21 for 123 yards passing, and two interceptions, yet somehow led his team to a 21-10 triumph.
John Schneider’s Best Seahawks Move: Saving his own Job
Success in player acquisitions by football boss John Schneider over the past two years has been rightly hailed as the Seahawks ascend the playoff ladder. As the next rung appears Sunday at Lumen Field, for what seems like the 11th meeting of the season with the Los Angeles Rams, it is also worthy to consider Schneider’s most critical move: Saving his own job when ownership ushered out legendary coach Pete Carroll after 14 generally remarkable seasons in Seattle.
Take Care Y’all’s Mentals: UW’s Quarterback Fiasco
Huskies fans locally, and many college football fans nationally, are rightfully wondering what the hell happened last week at Montlake. Some might assume that in a national culture and economy given over to the garnering of attention, the research-intense University of Washington landed upon a eureka moment: Look as foolish as possible! I find that a tad harsh. Emphasis on tad. To help understand how star quarterback Demond Williams Jr. signed on Jan.
Grand Finale: The Seahawks-Niners Game and what the Matchups Tell Us
49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is better than the Seahawks’ Sam Darnold. 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey is better than the Seahawks’ tandem of Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan is better than the Seahawks’ Mike Macdonald. Those are the three key pro football spots. Any other answers you need about the outcome of Saturday’s clash of the velociraptors at Jurassic Park Santa Clara?
Is Jedd Fisch OK with UW? Define OK in today’s college football
Attempting to offer a summary opinion about the current state of big-time college football is not easy. Every time a pause for reflection seems to appear, it is overtaken by another scandal, outrage, criminality, silliness or obfuscation that needs to be included. It’s a little like wading waist deep at the ocean beach: You think the next wave won’t be as strong as the one that just pulled you under. So I’m taking a chance here.
“He kept going and going and going”: That was Lenny Wilkens
For a sports town that savors its demonstrative sports bosses such as Lou Piniella and Pete Carroll, Lenny Wilkens could not have been more different. “When we’d get together for reunions,” said Jack Sikma Monday, “we’d joke that doctors had to search for his blood pressure. Just needle him a bit. “He’d purse his lips, and barely smile.” Lenny Wilkens takes in his bronze image at Climate Pledge Arena in July.
Details Matter: Why the Jays beat the Mariners
To show how far the Mariners have come, particularly regarding the acumen of manager Dan Wilson, we reach back into some club history that you probably won’t see dredged up anywhere else. As with Wilson, Maury Wills had no managerial experience when he was hired in midseason 1980 to succeed Seatttle’s first field boss, Darrell Johnson. Wills was, however, a seven-time All-Star as a shortstop with the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he became a base stealing immortal. It would be of little help.
The “Wilson Bounce”: Mariners of 1995 and 2025
Thirty years ago this month, Dan Wilson found himself in a squat. As a catcher, this was a professional obligation, not a punishment. What was different about this squat was where it was — in an audio riot unprecedented in his life. The Mariners were completing a 9-1 victory in a one-game tie-breaker against the California Angels. The win gave Seattle its first American League West title, and first playoff appearance, in the club’s mostly dreary 18-year history.
The Big Stumper: Are the Mariners Really this Good? Original
As every school child in the greater Seattle area knows, the Mariners are the lone MLB team never to have appeared in the World Series. Many theories have been advanced, particularly in the early years, for this championship desert. Bad indoor park that was brutal on pitchers. Bad outdoor ballpark that was brutal on hitters. A domed stadium in a culture that worships the outdoors in the world’s best summer. Grim travel problems for MLB’s most remote outpost. Dubious fan support.
“A Lot of Old Ideas aren’t the Same”: The Last of the Apple Cups?
One of the best themes in college sports fandom is geographic rivalry. Players, coaches and rules change every year, but the clash between sporting neighbors spans centuries and inspires outsized inflammation. Few have expressed the passion better than Jim Walden. “Nothing in my job,” said the Washington State coach ahead of the 1982 Apple Cup against Washington, “not the Rose Bowl, not the Holiday Bowl, nothing — is more important than beating the University of Washington.” Hyperbolic?
Getting Centered: Successful Seahawks Makeover may Depend on an Undrafted Free Agent
Since the regular season only starts Sunday, against the San Francisco 49ers, it’s a little early to be handing out Seahawks team MVP awards. Yet, as one who enjoys dabbling in the odd frontiers of human experience, I’ll put it this way: If the Seahawks make the playoffs, the team MVP award automatically goes to Jalen Sundell. Who is that, you rightly ask? He’s the guy hired to give the ball each offensive play to Sam Darnold, the new quarterback you selected with your guess.
Seahawks v. Former Seahawks. Preseason football kicks off
You know fall is around the corner when the NFL preseason begins. Tonight, the Seattle Seahawks are taking on the Las Vegas Raiders in their first pre-season matchup. Coach Pete Carroll and quarterback Geno Smith will be there, maybe a bit awkwardly for Hawks fans, on the Raiders side of the field. Carroll is the only coach who was able to lead the Seahawks to a Super Bowl title, and Smith helped them rack up winning records the past three years.
Getting Serious: Mariners come through for Raleigh at the Trade Deadline
For a maritime-themed franchise, the Mariners have been far more nought than dreadnought. That irony seems to have dwindled some lately. A series of random events have conspired together to cause the enterprise to be taken seriously. There. I said it. Or maybe it’s Seafair Week and I’m drunk. Perhaps this rare air was helped by the Hall of Fame induction speech of Seattle hero Ichiro, which should be nominated for the Speech Hall of Fame (he had me at his impression of broadcaster Rick Rizzs).
Ken Griffey Jr. and Cal Raleigh’s Secret to Success: Behold the Behind
Longtime Mariners fans may recall that Bob Stinson had the best nickname for a catcher in club history. “Scrap Iron” was the starter in the expansion franchise’s inaugural game in 1977 and stayed in town for the final four of his 12 years in MLB. He hit 26 of his 33 career home runs for the Mariners. Stinson’s latest Seattle successor, Cal Raleigh, has (through July 9) hit an MLB-leading 36 home runs in half a season, most in history by a catcher before the All-Star Game.
Pay to Play? College Athletics’ New Deal for the Pro Sports Era
To give an idea of the befouled nature of big-time college sports, it is perhaps the only enterprise in America that has sought help from the beleaguered federal government to save the industry from itself. That is like asking to wash your car in the driveway of the neighbor whose home is on fire. That preposterousness may begin to ease, starting today. The NCAA and its litigious athletes together open a new chapter July 1.
After Some Lean Years, Seahawks need a Score in This Week’s Draft
Regarding the NFL draft Thursday, the bad news for Seattle fans is that the Seahawks have a pick in the first round, 18th overall. The good news is they have nine other picks with which to attempt to make up for whomever is the first-round mistake. Cynical? By only a smidge or two. In the 15 years under current majordomo John Schneider, the Seahawks in the first round have squandered more than they have succeeded.
Time for the Mariners to Quit Playing Scared? Hell yes!
As Mariners fans enter their 49th year searching the barren wilderness for a World Series appearance, it is worth noting that it took Lewis and Clark only 28 months to walk from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back. All they had to put up with were bears, wolves, buffalo stampedes and a winter so dark and wet their tears went unnoticed. Plus, no GPS. So what? They didn’t have to encounter the Los Angeles Dodgers, beasts whose relentlessness rivals sandworms in Dune.
Dismantling the 2024 Seahawks: This is John Schneider’s Show
Don’t know that anyone has referred to Las Vegas as Baja Seattle. I choose to be the first. Its NFL team, the Raiders, which last won a playoff game in 2002, has Pete Carroll as head coach and Geno Smith as starting quarterback. Carroll’s sons, Brennan and Nate, are assistant coaches. All ex-Seahawks. It would be little surprise to see them joined in the off-season by receivers with Seattle ties. DK Metcalf has asked to be traded.
Year after Year: How Ichiro did it
I wish I could say that every time I sit down to write a column about baseball, I tug my right sleeve with my left hand. But consistency never was my thing. Nevertheless, in honor of the most unusual, successful, consistent athlete in my experience around Seattle sports, I start today. Ichiro Suzuki, this tug’s for you. I will leave to others in the tribe of baseball voters/scholars to decide whether that tug is a greater honor than Ichiro being selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame Tuesday.
Seahawks Fall Guy: Team Fires its Offensive Coordinator
Normally a 10-win regular season in the NFL, particularly with a 7-1 record on the road that tied a franchise record, is worthy of a feast with the finest meats and cheeses, as Kenny Mayne of Kent and ESPN often hyperbolized. But many Seahawks fans feel on this occasion that they have been served eggless omelets. The 30-25 win Sunday in Los Angeles over the nemesis Rams concluded the season for Seattle absent playoffs.
Football Playoffs Set, the College Payola Merry-go-round Spins On
As the rest of the sports world paws over the merits of the first 12-team College Football Playoffs field, announced Sunday and led by the undefeated Big Ten Conference champion Oregon Ducks, we direct your attention to a more prosaic, yet more long-term, part of the conversation. Kirk Schulz, 61, is retiring in June after nine years as president of Washington State University.
Putting the Hap in Hapless: Seahawks Pile up the Errors (But Don’t Blame Geno)
The Seahawks owe a debt of gratitude to the New York Yankees. In the fifth inning of game five of the World Series last month, the most fabled team in major league baseball, with a $300+ million payroll, had a sequence of folly so intense that it threatened to rip a hole in the space-time continuum. The Yanks blew a 5-0 lead by giving up five unearned runs — two errors and a brain fart — all scoring after two outs. They went on to lose the game and the series 4-1 to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Post-Defeat UW Football Excuses: Jedd Fisch Blames the Money?
Last week was not a good week for a couple of ex-Husky head football coaches. Kalen DeBoer and Steve Sarkisian each lost unexpectedly Saturday, shaking them from their high-profile perches. Nor was it a good week for their current successor at Montlake. Jedd Fisch’s version of the Washington Huskies isn’t ranked, and didn’t even play Saturday.
Yes, it’s 3 losses in 11 days for the Seahawks. And yet . . .
After the game, Geno Smith demonstrated a keener eye for the arched brows of reporters than the alignments of 49ers’ defensive backs. “How many games we lose today?” the Seahawks quarterback asked his quizzical inquisitors. Hearing no responses, he answered himself: “One.” True. But when it’s the third loss in 11 days, the numbers blur together. Especially the cumulative halftime scores of the three defeats: 37-20. Always being behind amplifies the futility.
Lessons in Futility: Mariners Notch Another Forgotten Season
After the Mariners’ most recent playoff game, an event that required nearly Ernest Shackleton levels of human endurance before losing to the loathsome Houston Astros 1-0 in 18 innings, a local fan might have thought the club’s bosses would be moved to commit to never accepting such agonizing offensive futility again. Such a fan likely was new to town.
The Best Revenge? Cougs Slip by the Huskies in an Apple Cup Like No Other
No other continuing drama in the state is like the Apple Cup. Because, you know, there’ve been 116 of them. But never has there been one like the latest one. After being torn apart by the vicious business currents of big-time college football, the University of Washington entered the season having to rebuild most of its football roster and all of the coaching staff that in January reached the national championship game.
Seahawks Opener: Grim turns to Grin
In terms of pressure on a leader to fix wayward local institutions such as Boeing, Seattle Police or the Mariners, Mike Macdonald was down the list a bit. Then again, he was the surprise hire to fix something that venerable football sage Pete Carroll didn’t figure was broken after a 9-8 season. So the youngest head coach in the NFL (37) had some proving to do Sunday in the Seahawks regular season opener. Especially after a garish first half at the Loo against the Denver Broncos.
Seattle’s Two Pro Football Teams Take the Field. Just Who are These Guys?
No longer hissing, spitting and steaming, the figurative meteor that struck Seattle’s two pro football teams in the second week in January finally can be examined. Readers may recall that in the span of four days, the Seahawks fired coach Pete Carroll and Huskies coach Kalen DeBoer was poached by Alabama. The episodes were coincidental, but randomness is seldom a satisfactory explanation for aggrieved sports fans. That was then, and this is the first week in September, when football returns.
A “Breathtaking Act of Misplaced Desperation”: Mariners Fire Their Manager
If Lou Piniella can be dispatched two years after helping create one of the greatest seasons in MLB history — the 116 wins remains an anomaly still unexplained by baseball scientists — then it stands to reason that the Mariners can fire manager Scott Servais two years after making playoffs for the first time since 2001: A Place Oddity.
Mariners: Good Mid-season Trades, but Good Enough?
July 15 was the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Mariners ballyard, then Safeco Field and now T-ball Park. The Mariners that season won 79 games, and 91 in 2000. Then in 2001, they won 116, a feat that remains as incongruous as the giant stone heads on Easter Island.
The Great Swoon: At Mid-Season, the Mariners Play to Form
My calls have yet to be returned from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, or Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. Nevertheless, I’m going to go ahead and presume that every MLB fan in the world, not just in Seattle, knew that the Mariners were going to be pitching heavy and hitting light in the 2024 MLB season. Including all in the organization. So no one can claim surprise at the outcomes here at midseason. But that restrained logic does little to diminish the futility of the moment.
Big Time Money, Big Time Turmoil: UW Athletics in the Era of Big Business
The business tsunami rolling through big-time college sports has turned over just about every desk, ball rack and bench in the athletics department at the University of Washington. I’m trying to confirm a rumor that the marching band is in negotiations to join Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Of the 22 starters on the team that reached the College Football Playoff championship game, two remain — cornerback Elijah Jackson and linebacker Alphonzo Tuputala.
The Rare Air of Bill Walton
Well before his broadcast personality made him an ebullient, irreverent national sports-culture hero in his final years, Bill Walton as a youngster was something of a budding sports nemesis. At least in Seattle. After an astonishing college career at UCLA — two championships and 88 wins in three seasons, still a record — under coach John Wooden, Walton was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the first pick in the 1974 draft.
Unexpectedly, the Mariners Need to do the Unexpected Again
Unexpected: At the trade deadline in 2023, the Mariners dealt away to Arizona one of MLB’s most reliable relievers, Paul Sewald, in exchange for OF Dominic Canzone and INF Josh Rojas. Sewald helped the Diamondbacks reach the World Series, and in 2023 Canzone hit .215 in 135 at-bats, and Rojas hit .272 in 125 at-bats.
Let’s Set Expectations: The Stakes for New Seahawks Coach Mike Macdonald
Free agency is over. The draft is over. As the NFL calendar slides into a relative pause, it’s a worthy time to assess the Seahawks nearly four months after the chair of the Paul Allen trust, Jody Allen, swapped out an aircraft carrier for a Zodiac. Which is not to suggest that Mike Macdonald won’t succeed in replacing Pete Carroll, but expecting someone who, at 36, has never been a head coach at any level to have quick success is . . . well, we really don’t even know what we don’t know.
Major League Awkwardness: Mariners Drop Their Opening Game
He came in late and low, but Shohei Ohtani officially won the Most Awkward Moment Award for the MLB off-season. He robbed the Seattle Mariners of the title. But only because his best friend allegedly robbed him. The best baseball player Monday told his new team, popularly forecast to be the best ever assembled, along with the world that his pal, interpreter, personal manager and fellow Los Angeles Dodgers employee robbed him of $4.5 million.
Oops, There Goes Another One… UW Loses Athletic Director
Trev Alberts was an athletics director in the University of Nebraska system, 12 years at Nebraska-Omaha and the past three at Nebraska-Lincoln, his alma mater, where in 1993 the Cornhuskers star won the Dick Butkus Award as the college nation’s top linebacker. On March 13, he was poached to be AD at Texas A&M, which paid the $4 million buyout to his former employer. Alberts replaced Ross Bjork, who took the AD job at Ohio State, where Gene Smith announced his retirement after 18 years.
NFL Free Agency: Dream of Difference-Makers, Settle For JAGs
Best news in the NFL’s annual free agency period for Seahawks fans? Aaron Donald retired. No opponent caused more hell for the Seahawks than the Rams’ leviathan defensive tackle, who announced Friday he was done after 10 years, all with the same franchise. The three-time NFL Defensive Player of Year almost single-handedly changed some of Seattle’s seasonal outcomes. Were it not for him, Pete Carroll might still be coaching here.
Cougar Men’s Basketball Team Could Win the Final Pac-12 Season. Time to Show Some Respect
For many Huskies fans, it’s easier to pull for Covid than pull for Cougars. But in the final week of the college basketball regular season, the recommendation here is for the purples to stifle the snickers and give some shout-outs to the crimson crowd.
Of Superbowls and Dynasties and a League Built for Parity
Dynasty is another word that rolls too easily off the lips of too many in the sports world. I’m not sure whether our collective custom of hyperbolizing every turn in a sequence began with politicians, cable-news media or sports, but Sunday’s Super Bowl Sunday inspired yet another bout of rhetorical overreach. Then again, that is bedrock for an event that was self-identified as “super” before the first one was played 58 years ago.
New Seahawks Coach Brings No Culture With Him. Good.
If the NFL held a draft to expunge words from the football vocabulary, my first-round choice would be “culture.” Football fans think they know what it is, but no one can explain it beyond some vague vibe around the head coach. Some ascribe much virtue to it. My guess is that Don Shula, Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry won a lot of games without knowing what the hell it was. Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll probably are hip to the term.
All About the Bucks: UW’s New Football Coach and the Realities of What College Football has Become
The fourth head football coach at the University of Washington in six years made a good first impression Tuesday. Then again, what top-tier coach doesn’t? Most of them have had a lot of practice at making good first impressions. The college coaching carousel will soon reach a spin rate rivaling a super-colliding superconductor. The speed is astonishing.
Class Act: Pete Carroll Exits as of Course he Would
After he finished a routine outdoor press chat following a practice at training camp, Pete Carroll was bopping — no other NFL coach has ever bopped — toward his office in the VMAC before I pulled a Richard Sherman and stepped in front, forcing the Seahawks coach to stop his route. “Non-football question, Pete,” I said. “In your time in LA, did you cross paths with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?” “Never did,” he said.
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