There’s a new dawn upon us in Seattle sports and it’s got the city of Seattle looking forward to the future. Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll was let go after 13 successful seasons. He will now serve as an advisor for the team, though we don’t know exactly what that’ll look like or how involved he’ll be with coaching decisions. He is leaving big shoes to fill after leading the team to back-to-back Super Bowl appearances with a win in 2013. In 11 of his 13 seasons coaching the Seahawks, they reached the playoffs.

Even with this incredible record, I still believe it was time for the Seahawks to introduce a new head coach, one with a more aggressive approach to building the team with new players. Seahawks quarterback, Geno Smith, is 33 years old and starting to regress. I believe it’s time for our team to draft a quarterback to either sit behind Geno Smith for a year, or start ahead of him and bring a new energy to the team, and Pete Carroll wasn’t doing that.

The Huskies have had to make big changes as well since their National Championship appearance in early January. Former Huskies head coach, Kalen DeBoer, agreed to take the head coaching job for the football team at the University of Alabama less than a week after the big game. It is unusual in college sports for a coach to lead their team to a National Championship, then leave for “greener pastures” just a week after.

This transition is made more difficult due to the fact that the entire Huskies offense that brought them to the championship departed. That transition was caused due to the transfer portal after Kalen DeBoer left. Enter Jedd Fisch, the former head coach of the University of Arizona football team, who brought his former team to a 10-3 record with a final spot of #11 in the top 25 college football teams in the country. Only time will tell if Fisch’s past successes will translate to another winning season for the Huskies who will have to rebuild after the loss of not only their championship coach, but many of the players as well.

This is a big shift that is happening in Seattle sports right now. Whether these changes were needed or forced upon us, I believe that the future of Seattle sports is in good hands with the new hirings that were made at both the professional and collegiate levels. Now we just have to wait until the next season to find out.