Coach Pete Carroll, and What He Taught Me
As he and two other coaching legends retire, I remember the opportunity to work briefly with him at USC - and how he took a different approach than most coaches
Whenever a coach retires, whether at a small Midwestern college or a preeminent pro team, reflection by pundits and the public begins almost immediately.
Remembering their big wins, their great falls, their personalities…we want to immediately put them in a box and define them, wrap them up, and put them away neatly on a shelf somewhere so we glance at them every once in a while, while gravitating to whoever the newest shiny coaching object is at the moment.
Three greats in football coaching announced their departures from their respective home fields nearly simultaneously this week, so I guess it seems more weighty and significant than when it’s only one long time coach retiring every few years. Three in one week? Three with this kind of gravitas and history in the game? That doesn’t happen.
So here I am, reflecting. I never got the chance to work personally with Nick Saban, nor Bill Belichick. But I did spend time in a professional capacity with Pete Carroll and his staff at USC for a short period of time, in 2006 just two years after winning back to back national titles. Just for the record, my work was very limited and for a short period of time. I’m not trying to paint the picture of me and Pete running towards the Pacific ocean with surfboards in hand after a long day of recruiting work at Southern Cal. No, like I said, our interactions were very brief and to the point, discussing recruiting and strategy and helping them overcome one particular recruiting hurdle they were having trouble getting past.
But one day of work was especially impactful to me, and I wanted to share it with you as I sit here reflecting on a coaching career that would be the envy of every coach in the country (except perhaps for those coaches whose last names happen to be Saban or Belichick).
That impact resulted in lessons any coach anywhere can learn from and use in their program.
Be yourself. Pete Carroll in person, behind the scenes, is the same person you see on the sidelines or in an interview. He wasn’t an act. And, I think that’s part of what lead to such a long an successful coaching career (that, along with knowing his stuff when it came to coaching football).
High energy nets high results. Coach Carroll, at least when he was well into his term at USC, bounced everywhere. Literally bounced. He was jogging everywhere within the offices on campus, like a football coach you would see on the field during warm-ups. Except this was off season, waaaaay before the start of the next season. But for Coach Carroll, there was no off button…always intensely smiling, almost always frantically chewing gum - and I doubt that changed when he became the coach for the Seahawks, just from watching him on the sidelines on TV. College coaching at high levels, with accompanying high level results, requires boundless energy, over a long period of time. How’s your boundless energy supply, Coach?
He ran the show, but valued the talent around him. The meetings I was involved in were with the entire staff - and at that time, Steve Sarkisian (now the head coach at
Texas) and Lane Kiffin (now the head coach at Ole Miss) were on the staff, including many other really great coaches. Of course, they followed Carroll’s lead on everything, but Carroll - to his great credit - valued the advice and insights of the talent around him. That sounds like an obvious best practice, but you’d be surprised how often I’ve seen assistant coaches not feel free to give honest feedback to their boss. And, conversely, I’ve seen head coaches paralyzed with the idea of boldly making a decision, or risking making a big move. Coach Carroll seemed to have a balance of both of those really vital qualities.
He didn’t take the “oh woe is me” attitude towards objections and negatives in recruiting. What problems could a college and high level BCS program like the back to back national champion USC Trojans have? For one, their location. Yes, SoCal…the weather…downtown L.A….Hollywood. But USC, for those who haven’t been to their campus before, is in an older area of the city that isn’t immune to crime and homelessness. Driving in, it doesn’t present as well as a coach may want it to present. So Coach Carroll and his staff took great pains to come up with routes into and out of campus, to and from LAX with recruits, that would present the best to a visiting family. They did that not because it was the ideal situation, or the one they would design themselves if they had the choice. It was what it was, and the staff took a positive attitude about it and didn’t use it as an excuse in recruiting and showcasing their program’s positives and all the great things about the campus itself.
The details mattered to him. I’m talking about the really, really small details…the kind of details you’d assume the assistant coach’s assistant coaches would be handling.
This aspect of Coach Carroll was actually the most insightful lessons I took away from my time there:
It was off-season, and he explained that after every season he and his staff would evaluate the things that they would give or do for the players…like the t-shirts and apparel they would give to the team. Coach Carroll lead the discussion with questions like, “how could these be better?” “Is there a better quality t-shirt that the guys would like more?” “Is our slogan or theme for the t-shirt the right one, or is there something better we could focus on next season?” The little details were important to him.
Another example: He and his coaches would spend designated time each off-season to go over team outings that they took during the season. Carroll was a master of being involved in details of what they could do around their area that would be fun for the team, allow for their program to bond with each other, and create non-football memories together. That’s rare for a D1 football coach to be involved in with that much detail, but Coach Carroll was that exception to the rule. “How can we make next year even better?” And, “What could have made that particular team trip better for the players?” “Hey, do you think we could get Will Ferrell to stop by and do something crazy at practice for the guys?” Again, the details mattered to him.
(Side note: That video you watched? It was on PeteCarrollTV, Coach Carroll’s YouTube channel he created for free, way before most coaches knew what YouTube was back in 2008. What kind of free branding have you initiated for yourself and your program, Coach??)
Was Coach Carroll perfect during his tenure at USC? No. He had plenty of scandals and incidents that happened under his watch - some of which were probably avoidable, and just like Pete Carroll should get credit for what we did with the Trojans’ program during his tenure, it’s fair to pin responsibility on him for things that went wrong.
But start to finish, as a coach, there’s a lot to admire in Coach Carroll when it comes to his creativity, energy, and passion that he brought daily to his USC Trojans’ program during his tenure. Take what examples you think you might need to add to your mix and daily routine, and learn from him - as well as the two other great coaches who left their longtime jobs this past week. None of them are perfect, to be sure, but let’s all agree that we can call them coaching legends that can teach us a lot about building winning programs, and succeeding in our careers.
