Seahawks Finish Up Their Camping Trip

Call it, perhaps, the calm before another storm, but Rams Park was exceedingly quiet Friday, one day after Seattle Seahawk owner Ken Behring wilted under heavy NFL pressure and announced he was heading back, at least for now, to the Pacific Northwest.

About a half-dozen Seahawk players arrived at the training facility Friday morning for spring conditioning, only to be told they would be back at their facility in suburban Kirkland, Wash., in about a week. Behring, faced with a $500,000 fine and an additional $50,000 for each week his team remains in Southern California, said he would leave by April 1.

Players took the latest news in stride.

“A few of the guys heard about it on television last night,” cornerback Dexter Seigler said, “but most didn’t see it [until they got here]. We’re generally shocked because we thought we’d be here for a while.”

If the team is leaving, there were few signs of it Friday during a noontime workout. Assistant publicity director Steve Wright, clipboard in hand, asked players if anyone needed to have his car shipped back to the Northwest. Meanwhile, players lifted weights and jogged.

Two moving trailers, the same ones that brought the team south early last month, stood in the parking lot ready to be packed again, while a city work crew fiddled with the sprinklers on the practice field. Behring has said he will reimburse Anaheim for the costs of fixing up the former Magnolia School District elementary school, also the former offices of the former Los Angeles Rams.

Friday is normally an off-day for most players during spring conditioning, so not as many were around. Later in the day, players’ moods turned to outright disdain for visitors, and Wright declared the practice field and weight room off limits to the media.

Security guard Terry McClure, on the job about two weeks, said he hated to see the Seahawks leave because he had grown fond of the 35 or 40 players he cleared through the gates on a regular basis. But McClure said he knew something was up early Friday morning.

“When the furniture truck pulled up to the building this morning and didn’t drop anything off, I knew it was a bad sign,” he said.

Second-year Seahawk center Kevin Mawae said he was informed of the move late Thursday night when a television station called him. Mawae, who recently purchased a new home in Seattle, said he welcomes the return.

“I hope this gets settled. I’m tired of being in the middle,” he said. “That’s the problem, the players are just in the middle. Nobody tells us anything unless we hear it from a reporter or the television. We have to rely on you guys to tell us what’s going on.”

A dozen or so fans, some from Orange County, some from Seattle, joined forces outside the gate of Rams Park. Many wore T-shirts, other carried signs that read “Save Our Seahawks.” Another sign read: “See ya at home on the 1st, But it’s not over yet.” Several homes in the quiet neighborhood near the corner of Polk and Ventura avenues also bore signs in favor of the Seahawks returning to Seattle.

Seattle resident Mark Collins, president of Save Our Seahawks, Inc., has been at the entrance to the facility since Wednesday, along with SOS Vice President Dean Olsby, also of Seattle. They handed out signs and claimed that their organization has thousands of supporters in a region stretching from Alaska to Montana. They say they have been told privately that the majority of the Seahawk players support the return to Seattle.

“Behring is a used-car salesman, that’s all he is,” Collins said. “This is all about money and he doesn’t care who he takes down, not even his son.”

Collins was referring to Seahawk President David Behring.

Olsby, a Seattle restaurateur, passed around suntan oil while showing off a sunburn he got passing out SOS fliers at Disneyland Thursday.

“Just about everywhere I go down here everyone tells me they don’t want them here,” he said of the Seahawks.

Cheri Padden of Huntington Beach, who stood outside Rams Park with an autograph book in hand, agreed.

“We want a team here, but an expansion team, not this team,” she said.