Posted: Thursday, February 12, 2015 9:00 am
By Amanda Helt
Photo by Johnathan Swayne
Seattle’s city lights bring a united love for the arts and caffeine, and more rigid aspects of our culture such as technology and football. Northwest University students embrace it all. After all, NU is known for its rich culture.
Yet Seattle’s close proximity to our campus is not the only reason for the rich culture we as a community share. NU’s professors and adjunct instructors inspire this love, as well. One person in particular is new adjunct professor Darryl Jacobsen, who probably is influenced by culture more than most students.
A first-year teacher, Jacobsen instructs advanced video development as a highly popular evening course titled Advanced Storytelling. Jacobsen said he explores everything from how to light a video set to analyzing different film genres. Recently students developed a trailer for a movie, but they portrayed it in a different genre.
Jacobsen doesn’t just invest time helping his students at NU. He spends even more of his time up close and personal with the Seattle Seahawks. For two years Jacobsen worked as a Seahawks intern and was very recently promoted to full-time, which seems to be paying off.
“My first two years in a full-time position and we went to the Super Bowl both times. I do coaching videos, so I’m technically on the coaching staff,” Jacobsen quipped.
Play after play, Jacobsen watches the Seahawks work hard for their next win, which requires a good amount of studying by both the Seahawks and Jacobsen. “I do all the analytic video that coaches, players and scouts watch,” he said.
Jacobsen sets up videos and displays them in a way that identifies patterns and trends in games. “We can say, like, every time Russell Wilson throws a touchdown pass to Jermaine Kearse, and then it will bring up every time that it has ever happened,” he said. “So we even put all this data onto so [we can do almost] anything you can possibly think of.”
For the last two Super Bowls, Jacobsen worked with the Seahawks to harness their talent by studying their performance on the field. “The team then takes everything they’ve observed onto the field. Win or lose, they learn from it,” he said. “They expect to win every single game, regardless.”
Especially for this year’s Super Bowl, the Seahawks brought all their resources to Arizona – including Jacobsen. “They wanted all this information up at the hotel, so right when they got into the hotel they could watch the footage,” he said. “The players have one hundred percent access to the video. They will come to us; we load it up and put it on their [iPads] for them.”
The heartbreaking Super Bowl loss is still sinking in for many Seattle fans, and Jacobsen told The Talon nobody knows this better than the people who are [working] with the Seahawks. “The complete mood of the office is based on whether we win,” he said. “If we lose any game, you should assume you’re going to be working long shifts.”
It was quite a perk for Jacobsen to be at the Super Bowl – the Seahawks’ most stressful game yet. The whole game was “just like a roller coaster,” he said, recalling the craziest moment as the game drew to a close.
“Jermaine caught the ball and it bounced up in the air. I thought they intercepted it, but then I found out they caught it,” Jacobsen said. “I was shooting [Video at that moment]. I was pretty bummed.”
It’s true that NU’s Seahawks fans have been pretty bummed, too. After all, the Seahawks are part of our culture that brings us together.
Jacobsen confirms he is going back to work to help the Seahawks achieve more winning streaks next season. But will the Seahawks be going back to the Super Bowl for a third year in a row?
“That’s the plan,” Jacobsen said.
