2024 Distinguished Alumnus of the Year

Lance Lopes ’85 came to Linfield from Winnemucca, Nevada, a 2-stoplight town in the middle of nowhere where less than 10% of students attended college. By his senior year, he had matured to the point that during our playoff run to our 1984 football national championship, he had to tell Ad Rutschman that he would be missing the semi-final game because he needed to take the LSAT test (law school entry exam) that day, the only day it was offered. That was a sacrifice few young people would have made at that time, but Lance was determined to control his destiny.

Early career

He attended the University of Oregon Law School, and upon graduation, he took a job with the largest law firm in Hawaii, Cades Schutte of Honolulu. After two years, Lance returned to Seattle and began working at a firm, Helsell Fetterman, in downtown Seattle. During that time, he volunteered at the Boys & Girls Club as a youth basketball coach.

Working in the NFL

In 1993, The Green Bay Packers hired Lance as their first General Counsel. He was 30 years old at the time. As an aside, to accept that position he had to pass the Wisconsin Bar, which coupled with having already passed the Hawaii, Oregon and Washington bar exams, put him in the rarified air of taking and passing four bar exams - an accomplishment few have tackled. In Lance’s role with the Packers, he regularly attended the NFL’s owner meetings as the team President’s proxy and sole representative on multiple occasions. Sitting in a room conducting NFL business with the likes of Jerry Jones, Lamar Hunt, Dan Rooney and 28 other NFL owners, for a 33-year-old from Winnemucca was humbling. Lance negotiated NFL player contracts among other duties and was a part of two Super Bowl teams, winning a ring for Super Bowl XXXI. Lance eventually rose to the rank of Executive VP, General Counsel.

In 2000, he became the first employee of a start up in San Francisco that became StubHub. Lance was their Director of Business Development for one year. In 2001, he accepted the General Counsel position with the Seattle Seahawks. Lance worked for the Seahawks for 13 years and went to two Super Bowls, winning a ring for Super Bowl XLVII. While with the Seahawks, he rose to the position of Executive VP, General Counsel with oversight for Qwest Field. Lance led the search that identified and hired Pete Carroll and John Schneider, who became the most successful leaders of the Seahawks in franchise history. Lance was also on the management team that started the expansion Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise - Seattle Sounders. The Sounders went on to set MLS records for attendance in consecutive playoff seasons and they became the gold standard for MLS franchises to follow thereafter. During this time, Lance served on the Board of Directors of the Mercer Island Boys & Girls Club for 13 years. He also coached about a dozen youth sports teams.

Impacting sports in the Northwest

In 2014, Lance left the Seahawks and accepted a position at the University of Washington as the Senior Association Athletics Director position and served in that role for 2.5 years. During that time, one of the teams Lance oversaw, Women’s Golf, won the only NCAA championship that U of W had won in the last 20 years.

In 2017, Lance became the first Seattle employee of Oak View Group, a new arena and stadium development company, as its Director, OVG Seattle, he was responsible for leading the local effort to get the $1.2B Climate Pledge Arena built on the Seattle Center Campus. After three years, when the team successfully accomplished the task of getting the approvals and agreements in place, Lance became the first employee of the new NHL expansion team, the Seattle Kraken. He continues to serve as the Kraken’s Executive VP, General Counsel. The Seattle Kraken have been a major success in the region, with two years of sold-out attendance, along with community and on-ice success.

For his impressive career, Lance Lopes was selected as the 2024 Distinguished Alumnus of the Year.