You’ve probably seen him on the sidelines, in the stands or beating the drums at Qwest Field. After all, with his tuft of blue feathers and yellow beak, Seattle Seahawks mascot Blitz is hard to miss. Well, as it turns out, there happens to be a geek behind that beak.
Blitz is none other than Ryan Asdourian, a hardware marketing lead at Microsoft. Asdourian, a former University of Florida Gator mascot, has donned the Blitz feathers for the past five years. Asdourian was featured today in a Microsoft blog post — in part because of his efforts to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis.
Diagnosed with the disease in December 2008, Asdourian since then has been raising awareness and funds for the annual MS Walk through Team Blitz. In fact, for the upcoming MS Walk in Seattle, scheduled for April 3rd at Husky Stadium, Asdourian’s Team Blitz currently is in first place in terms of fundraising at just over $43,000.
But Asdourian still has a ways to go in order to hit his $134,000 goal.
This year’s walk will be extra special, with Asdourian telling the MicrosoftJobsBlog that mascots from 11 other NFL teams are expected to attend.
“We do a convention every year and this year some of the veteran mascots said they wanted to have it in Seattle to support me and help with fundraising,” Asdourian says. “So, even though the NFL is in lockout, all of the mascots are going to come together this year for a common cause.”
Personally, I’ve always been a bit of Squatch fan myself. But, since our Sonics left town, the next best Seattle sports mascot has got to be Blitz.
Asdourian is accustomed to working a crowd, helping to fire up more than 67,000 fans at Qwest Field on game days. But now he wants those same fans to join in his fundraising campaign, asking that each Hawks fan donate $2.
John Cook is co-founder of GeekWire. Follow on Twitter: @geekwirenews.
