SEATTLE — During the roughly five months the Seattle Seahawks were on the market, there was never once a report that a sale could result in the team moving.

Never a report about a city just sitting and waiting for someone to buy an NFL team and move it there.

No suggestion from anyone associated with the team in any way that relocation is in anyone's thoughts.

Still, that fear inevitably lingers in the minds of some after the news over the weekend that the Paul G. Allen Estate had reached agreement to sell the Seahawks to a group led by the Khosla family of the Bay Area for $9.612 billion.

Including the Allens, the Seahawks have had only three previous owners.

And the only time they had a nonlocal owner, Ken Behring — who also had Bay Area ties — he tried to move them to Southern California and fill an opening that was created when the Rams and Raiders left town in 1994.

There's also the still-raw memory of the NBA's Sonics being bought by Clay Bennett in July 2006 and moving to Oklahoma City barely two years later. And yes, those with long memories may still recall the ill-fated one-year existence of the Pilots.

So even if there's no evidence to suggest a move of the team is even the faintest of considerations as the Seahawks change hands, it may be hard to stave off some anxiety as the process unfolds.

Let us, then, put your mind at ease with three reasons why the Seahawks aren't moving.

This isn't the Sonics/OKC situation

That the Sonics did leave town is usually the first thing anyone brings up when wondering if there's any chance — or reason to fear — that the Seahawks could.

Neither the Seahawks nor Mariners have changed hands to a completely new ownership group since the Sonics left, so this is the first experience with an ownership change among Seattle's original big three men's pro sports franchises since.

There is simply nothing analogous between this situation and what happened with the Sonics.

The Sonics were bought by a new owner who was from Oklahoma City, who as we now know, did so with the plan to move them there, all with the encouragement of the NBA.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Recall that NBA commissioner David Stern appeared to have it in for Seattle since he received a frosty reception when he accompanied then-owner Howard Schultz to Olympia to try to lobby for state funding for a new arena in February 2006.

OKC had a ready-made NBA arena and fans there had just spent a season filling it to watch the New Orleans Hornets, who played there the 2005-06 season because Hurricane Katrina made their arena unplayable.

Along with punishing Seattle, Stern appeared to want to make a point that an NBA team could move if cities/states didn't do as the league wanted.

Roger Goodell isn't David Stern and this isn't the Sonics and Bennett in 2008. And San Francisco, you may recall, already has a team.

Relocations don't happen the way you might think

Yes, NFL teams do sometimes move, though maybe not quite as often as you think — there have been nine relocations since 1963.

Three of those involved the Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders and the mercurial Davis family.

None of the others involved a new owner buying a team and immediately moving them.

They were mostly long-standing owners who'd gotten embroiled in stadium disputes and decided to head for greener pastures, such as Robert Irsay infamously packing up the Colts in the middle of the night and trekking from Baltimore to Indianapolis in 1984, Bud Adams dragging the Oilers from Houston to, eventually, Nashville in the 1990s or Dean Spanos moving the Chargers 120 miles up I-5 from San Diego back to their original home in L.A.

The Rams moved to St. Louis in 1994 because of a bad stadium situation in Anaheim and because owner Georgia Frontiere just wanted to take a team back to her hometown. They moved back to L.A. after Missouri native Stan Kroenke, who became a minority owner in 1997, got a majority share in 2010 and spearheaded the move. (A move that cost the NFL and Kroenke $790 million to settle a lawsuit with St. Louis, something the league likely doesn't want to go through again).

In other words, the far bigger fear — based on NFL precedent, anyway — is your long-standing owner getting tired of where they are and moving, not a new owner buying the team and taking it somewhere else.

Where would they go that's better than Seattle?

If you're still worried, ask yourself this — what situation could a new ownership group find that's better than Seattle?

Consider the Seahawks current setup: They just won the Super Bowl guided by a 39-year-old wunderkind head coach already considered among the best in the game and a general manager who has a Pro Football Hall of Fame resume, each under contract for at least four more seasons. They boast a 190-game sellout streak and garner local TV ratings that usually rank among the top 10 in the NFL. And they capture an area of the country that would be left without a team if the Seahawks did move, and are one of the more identifiable brands in the league (they ranked 10th in merchandise sales last season according to Lids).

It's hard to fathom the NFL would approve a move out of a market such as Seattle (as with a sale, a relocation has to be approved by 24 of 32 owners). And while we are unlikely to hear anything from the Khosla family until after the sale is approved Aug. 26, it’s equally hard to fathom they want to fix what’s not broken.

It's worth remembering the NFL stopped Behring from moving the team to Southern California in 1996, imposing a fine of $500,000 after he first moved some equipment there, with a threat of fines of $50,000 for every week he stayed (and that was with everyone understanding something had to be done with the Kingdome following the falling tiles incident in 1994).

Any list of noninternational cities that the NFL could someday expand usually starts with two that just lost them because of stadium issues — St. Louis and San Diego.

No one is going back to play in St. Louis' dome without major upgrades and San Diego doesn't even have a stadium anymore after demolishing Jack Murphy.

Sure, the Khosla family figures to review Lumen Field and its future. Undoubtedly, they already have undertaken a significant study of that topic and the price tag paid for the whole package that comes with the Seahawks would seem to indicate they aren't uncomfortable with any of it (the lease at Lumen Field runs through 2031).

Who knows?

Maybe someday the new ownership group explores either upgrades to Lumen or possibly ideas for a new stadium somewhere else in the area, as is occurring with the Bears and Chiefs.

But the Seahawks moving out of Seattle?

On the list of local sports things to worry about, you're better off concentrating on the Mariners' struggles hitting with runners in scoring position.

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