The staredown between Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson hasn't changed, although The Athletic did a good a job Thursday explaining the history and context of the fraying that has captivated the NFL, and by extension, most of sports.

The pressure on the Seahawks, however, did go up a bit later Thursday. Wilson's agent, Mark Rodgers, told ESPN's Adam Schefter that, while no trade has been requested, there are now just four teams for which he would agree to waive his no-trade clause:

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Where would the Mariners be this week if chairman John Stanton had fired Kevin Mather in 2018?  That's when it became publicly known the club was sued by three female employees, two of whom accused the club president of sexual harassment, and accepted financial settlements.

The players would be at Arizona spring training playing and talking ball, not hearing things like this from staff ace Marco Gonzales:

"Sometimes a common goal can guide (a team)," he said Tuesday. "Sometimes a common enemy can do the same, if not greater. I think that's the boat we're in right now."

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In 1987, George Argyros tried to buy the San Diego Padres while owning the Seattle Mariners. The shocking stunt broke every ownership rule, custom and norm in MLB. Even his close friend, Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, felt compelled to fine his pal, a California real estate developer who bought the club in 1981, $10,000 for calling the Padres manager, a violation of the rules against tampering with other teams.

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If arrogant swagger is a valuable part of a sports championship team, Kevin Mather is more than ready to do his part.

The Mariners' seldom-heard-from president told the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club Feb. 5 that after the club wins a World Series, it will stage a celebration in downtown Seattle that will make the Seahawks 2014 Super Bowl version "look like a neighborhood Fourth of July parade. We're gonna do it right. I'm looking forward to delivering with that.

"I think we're on the verge of something special."

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In terms of enlightenment among among global sports operations, the NBA is generally considered to be the leader of the pack. That doesn't mean they are any less ruthless when it comes to, say, ripping up one of its franchises and replanting it elsewhere, mostly out of spite.

But it usually doesn't miss a chance to be a social-issues trail blazer (not looking at you, Portland), at least when it doesn't cost them money.

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Infinity, by any definition, is a mysterious concept. Perhaps the only way for a non-mathematician to appreciate endlessness or boundlessness is to use an alternative term more understandable.

I suggest Marinerness -- a time/space quality of being everywhere, but nowhere.

As Seattle fans this month enter their 44th year of the experience of baseball infinity, I doubt further explanation is necessary.

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In sorting through the latest NFL parlor game, WDRW  -- What Does Russell Want? -- I remembered an answer to a Zoom question Wilson offered Dec. 17, a few days after the Seahawks beat the New York Jets, 40-3.

That was a high point that seemed to signal a seasonal restoration of a dominant offense, even if the Jets were winless, and spoke well to Seattle's chances in the pending playoffs.

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Just for, um, fun.

Here's a random sampling of pro-team superstars, and how long they lasted with their first major league team, followed by career length. Not saying there's anything immediate happening in Seattle, but suddenly there's a whole lotta WTFs in the air regarding a certain quarterback who has become the town gossip.

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The business of the franchise quarterback is the most compelling personnel theater in the NFL. By extension, it's the most compelling non-game theater in sports, even more than a similar drama with the NBA.

In basketball, superstars dictating their desired employers, and hustling up a superstar buddy or two to join him, has become standard operating procedure. But the smaller number of players makes positive outcomes far more likely in hoops, because football requires 22 starters and 53 total, and has separate units for offense and defense.

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If the panicky desperation of Patrick Mahomes Sunday didn't remind you of Russell Wilson in recent years barely running ahead of the bulls of the NFL, you may have just moved to the area in the past month.

But the biggest local takeaway in Tampa Bay's surprising 31-9 evisceration of Kansas City (box) in Super Bowl LV was the echo from 2014 and Super Bowl XLVIII: In pinnacle NFL games, a great defense pops off rivets of a good offense.

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Congratulations are in order for Tom Flores, who was the lone finalist in the coach category and will be part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2021. Word of the overdue selection came during the annual NHL Honors program Saturday night ahead of Super Bowl LV.

Flores won two Super Bowls as coach of the Raiders. He also won titles as a player and assistant coach, a three-job distinction he shares only with fellow Hall of Famer Mike Ditka. Flores was the first Latino to be head coach and a quarterback in the NFL. Bravo.

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One of the consequences of the pandemic for many is an abrupt re-jiggering of timelines, because the future is no longer what it was purported to be: Certain, and depending on age, long-term.

Threats are sudden, existential and many. My favorite retort to such thinking was rolled out years ago by Seattle author and former Post-Intelligencer writer and copy editor Tom Robbins in his masterpiece, Still Life With Woodpecker.

"It's never too late," he wrote, "to have a happy childhood."

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Listening to Shane Waldron talk about Pete Carroll's football truths, he sounded almost like an idolatrous son. And since Carroll recently waved good-bye to his son/assistant coach, Brennan, who left the Seahawks to become offensive coordinator at the University of Arizona, that makes a lot of pop-psychology sense.

Nah. Too easy.

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Down the road, there will be time to discuss bi-polar disorder and the role it played in turning former Seahawks offensive lineman Chad Wheeler nearly homicidal, and who and what was responsible for allowing it to happen.

But Monday morning, Wheeler's victim, who will not be named here in an attempt to make her life slightly less miserable, had her first forum in King County Superior Court.

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Of more interest than Friday afternoon's official announcement of Shane Waldron to succeed Brian Schottenheimer as offensive coordinator was the filling of a second Seahawks coaching vacancy.

Waldron's former college teammate and longtime friend, Andy Dickerson, was hired to be running game coordinator. Dickerson also was an assistant coach with the Rams, in fact the longest tenured (nine years) of head coach Sean McVay's staff.

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I'd like to ask a favor simultaneously of the Seahawks and the rest of the NFL, and even the broader big-time sports community, to which we devote a disproportionate amount of interest, affection and disposable income.

Because an innocent woman lies in a Seattle-area hospital after being beaten nearly to death by her boyfriend, who is now a former Seahawks player, and because mental-health issues for athletes are no longer taboo material for public discourse, I'd like to ask for an explanation about what teams and leagues do to ascertain whether a prospective employee is as fit psychologically as physically for a high-stress job.

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The Seahawks certainly haven't beaten the Rams much. So they are taking one to join them.

Shane Waldron, for the past three seasons the passing game coordinator with Seattle's nemesis under head coach Sean McVay, but has never been an NFL offensive coordinator, reportedly has been hired by coach Pete Carroll to replace Brian Schottenheimer.

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As far as stand-up people in sports, Sounders majority owner Adrian Hanauer and general manager Garth Lagerwey are solid guys. If they say something, they generally mean it, and it wouldn't be like them to screw with anyone's career.

But it took them sooo long to secure a contract extension for coach Brian Schmetzer that it felt as if something was up.

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The Tom Brady haters are pulling obliques, hamstrings and biceps in their communal retch over his arrival at another Super Bowl, the 10th for the Anointed One. That's fine -- we all prefer villains for our pretend lives, rather than our political lives.

But if we hold off our Brady annoyances for just a bit, I'd like to offer some attention to the fact that SB LV is the first in which the host stadium has its own team.

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The final Pac-12 Conference standings for Larry Scott's tenure as commissioner will show more L's than W's. But let's give him credit for a championship exit. He's bailing in June, a year ahead of contract expiration, but also ahead of more grimness for big-time college sports.

Scott won't have to deal with the Power 5 conferences seceding sloppily from the NCAA to form their own minor-league pro football enterprise.

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