There were moving vans. There was despair and hopelessness. Team employees cried at their desks.
In 1996, the threat of the Seahawks moving to Southern California was very, very real. In fact, for a brief time, they did move, setting up shop in Anaheim, where players conducted their offseason workouts at the Rams’ old facility.
The franchise, just 20 years old at the time, needed a knight in shining armor to save it – just as the Mariners had a few years earlier. For the Mariners, it was Nintendo owner Hiroshi Yamauchi, who bought the team in 1992 to thwart a move to St.