Paul Allen would be right at home scrolling the Seattle Seahawks internet experience today — so long as the late Microsoft co-founder and team owner’s dial-up connection was working.
In a throwback to the 1990s, when Allen saved Seattle’s NFL team and Microsoft was growing into a tech giant, the Seahawks unveiled a web experience Wednesday to coincide with the release of a throwback uniform and gear for fans.
Complete with a vintage Microsoft start button and image of an old PC on seahawks.com, the throwback site launches with the sound of a classic internet dial-up. Dialing … connecting … connected!
The site is presented by Microsoft and features an ad for Internet Explorer that resolves to the Edge browser home page. An ad for Windows 95 goes to the Windows 11 site. And another vintage-looking ad for the Seahawks mobile app shows an HP iPAQ Pocket PC and goes to the modern site for downloading the app. There’s even a picture of a pager encouraging fans to text for team promotions and ticket availability.
A story on the site recalls the era in which Allen purchased the team, as a “pop culture revolution” took off in Seattle with the hysteria around grunge music, Starbucks coffee and the emergence of the tech scene.
The uniforms feature the Seahawks original retro logo on silver helmets. The royal blue and apple green jerseys are meant to honor “the Salish seas and forests of the Emerald City and Pacific Northwest,” a story on the site reads. A patch on the inside of the neckline features the Kingdome, the Seahawks home stadium until 1999.
Players including Bobby Wagner, DK Metcalf, Geno Smith, Tyler Lockett, Quandre Diggs and others are pictured modeling the uniforms.
Matt Haberkamp, Seahawks digital platform manager, oversaw the project and said it was fun to dig through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to look back at popular websites of the ’90s and focus on creating a nod to the old Seahawks.com.
“We wanted to include as many small nuggets as we could think of,” Haberkamp said. “Connecting to the internet with a dial-up sound, popups, animated GIFs, images that won’t load, and an overload of ads all while using fonts, graphics and web design of the time.”
Haberkamp said the side rails were one of the highlights, using images of retro devices and Seahawks legends in calls for fans to share their memories and so on
“We were able to add Microsoft as a presenting partner to include their ’90s advertisements which pulled everything together,” he added.
In a throwback video on Twitter, Seahawks first-round draft pick Jaxson Smith-Njigba stars as a player waking up — in the throwback uniform — to the ’90s, in a home filled with touchstones from that decade. An old alarm clock, video game console, posters, a PC and more are shown in his room as he puts on headphones for a Sony Walkman.
