Seahawks Fans Buy Newspaper Ad To Thank Pete Carroll: 'Love, The 12s!'
The phrase "the end of an era" feels somewhat overused nowadays, but it was entirely accurate when the Seattle Seahawks parted ways with longtime coach Pete Carroll earlier this month.
Carroll wasn't just the Seahawks' coach for 14 years, but he led the most-successful stretch in franchise history. With two Super Bowl appearances and the team's first-ever championship, Carroll has cemented himself as a major piece of the club's history.
© Matthew Emmons, USA TODAY
With the announcement coming so suddenly, it almost felt like fans didn't get to give Carroll a proper send off. As such, a group of fans banded together to give him just that, buying a full-page advertisement in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times to thank him.
Isaac Lilly first posted his idea for the ad on the Seahawks' subreddit, knowing it would take a group effort to make his vision a reality.
"It feels like something someone would do, and I was like, ‘I haven’t seen it in The Times yet,’ so I just posted it there, not thinking anything of it," Lilly told Fox 13 Seattle. "Checked back during my lunch break, and there’s hundreds of comments saying, ‘I'll commit $12,’ ‘I'll commit $50,’ so I was like, ‘Okay, guess I should call The Seattle Times.’"
Lilly then found out that a full-page ad in The Seattle Times costs $7,000, with such an ad on Sunday costing $9,000. He posted a link to a GoFundMe page as a Hail Mary, but not only did fans quickly band together to reach the goal, but they even had leftover money to donate.
"This is not realistic at all, but sure, I will post the GoFundMe, and I will forget about it and return the money to everybody when we inevitably fall short of the $7,000 because that’s a lot of money," Lilly said. "Fast-forward to that night, I check it at 7 or 8 o’clock, and it’s at 7K. Like, it took less than one day."
The ad even pays tribute to some of Carroll's final words in Seattle. When asked how he wanted to be remembered at his final press conference, Carroll pointed to the 1984 baseball movie The Natural.
“Roy Hobbs,’’ Carroll said in reference to the film's main character. “What I’d like to be remembered (is) as Roy Hobbs. There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was. I wish it could be like that.’’
To Lilly and other Seahawks fans, Carroll is indeed the best there ever was.
"So I wrote in the ad: ‘There goes Pete Carroll, the best there ever was,’" Lilly said. "So hopefully, he feels that he accomplished his goal, that he’s recognized and acknowledged for his goal here, and we’re going to love that and cherish that forever."
