[Vision2020] More Than Football

[Tom Hansen]

Having been raised by a mother that graduated from UCLA, and having 
attended virtually every UCLA-USC football game in my youth (and several 
since then) I have grown to strongly support the adversarial "wall" that 
separates the blue-and-gold from its crimson-and-gold cross-town rival.

My attitude toward USC football coaches had undergone a rennaisance last 
night while watching CBS' "60 Minutes".

I may, as I always have, continue to cheer on the UCLA Bruins from the 
coin toss of the first game until the final gun of the season, however, 
outside of that I am a Pete Carroll fan through-and-through.

>From CBS News' "60 Minutes" at:

http://tinyurl.com/PeteCarroll
 
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Pete Carroll's Winning Coaching Style

Cameras Also Follow Him On His Late-Night Missions To Stop L.A.’s Gang 
Violence

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Byron Pitts speaks with USC college football coach Pete Carroll, who, in 
addition to his success with the Trojans, is making a difference toward 
decreasing gang violence in Los Angeles.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4667942n
 
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He's been called the “Prince of L.A.," and Pete Carroll's "castle" is the 
L.A. Coliseum, the home field to the University of Southern California 
Trojans. It’s where 93,000 loyal subjects bleed red and gold on Saturdays. 
It's a uniquely American ritual played out with more glitz, glamour and 
pageantry than almost anywhere else in the country. 

"This is how we like it. This is how we want it to be. I don’t want it any 
different than this. I want it as hyped and as big time as possible. And I 
want to show that we know how to deal with it and handle it and still play 
beautifully you know ," Carroll explained. 

The Trojans played well enough on the day 60 Minutes filmed there to beat 
up cross country rival Ohio State. They did it with a stifling defense, 
despite some unusual distractions. 

"During the game, when it was still undecided, one of your players was 
posing for a picture with Arnold Schwarzenegger," Pitts pointed out. 

"The Governator stepped in. I heard he was there. I didn’t get to see him. 
Well, how do you turn down the governor? I got I got some power over it 
but not that much," Carroll joked. 

"But it's during the game," Pitts remarked. 

"Yeah, well I didn't know that happened. Who did it? No…," Carroll said. 

Make no mistake, it's that unconventional, laid back California style 
that’s part of Pete Carroll’s success. He's produced three Heisman trophy 
winners, 42 NFL players, and 30 All-Americans in just seven years. In the 
high stakes, high stress business of college football, where most coaches 
are screamers, perpetual drill sergeants forever in a bad mood, Pete 
Carroll says he is having the time of his life. 

"One of your rivals, Charlie Weiss, the coach of Notre Dame, said on this 
program, on 60 Minutes that all coaches are miserable. You miserable?" 
Pitts asked. 

"No. I never have been miserable," Carroll replied. "I keep thinking day 
to day, that somethin' good's just about happen, you know. And so, that 
mentality, whether I'm in a game or coachin' in the midst of the season, I 
don't know how to think otherwise. And that doesn't take you to misery." 

It did take him to another win and an 11 and 1 season. 

Pete Carroll's been a champion at USC, but it wasn't always that way. He 
worked as an assistant coach for 17 years before a less than impressive - 
some have even called disastrous - run as an NFL head coach. 

Carroll acknowledged that he loved the NFL, but that they didn't love him 
back. "They didn’t like me too much," he told Pitts. 

He became head coach of the New York Jets in 1994. He was fired after one 
season. His reaction to losing his job? 

"You know I got fired at the Jets, I was, 'This is the best thing that 
ever happened to me. That was my first thought,'" Carroll said. "I know 
how crazy that sounds, but that’s what went through my mind, you know, and 
it’s because I had three years left in my contract too. You know that has 
something to do with it." 

Carroll tried again with the New England Patriots in 1997. He got fired 
there after he took a Super Bowl contender straight to the basement in 
three seasons. 

"People have characterized your tenure in the NFL as a failure. You buy 
that?" Pitts asked. 

"I hate hearing that," Carroll admitted. "That doesn’t sit well with me at 
all. You know they made the right decision for them. But I didn't go out 
thinking I'd failed. I was looking, 'Let me go, let’s go to the next shot. 
Let’s go, let’s get this thing right.'" 

He didn't look back, and he didn't give up. Instead he convinced the 
administration at USC to hire him as a college coach. Alumni and fans 
hated the idea. 

"I was kinda like that big bomb that dropped here on you when I arrived. 
You know, the, I guess the emails and the faxes and all that stuff were 
burning up the machines here," Carroll recalled.

One of those e-mails, sent to the L.A. Times, read, "What was it about 
Pete Carroll that made you want to hire him for the head coaching job? Was 
it his complete lack of recruiting ties to the West Coast? His limited 
college coaching experience? His reputation for being soft on players and 
not a good motivator?" 

Carroll's reaction? "Isn't that a beautiful thing? It's a beautiful thing. 
I love runnin' into those guys. They come up. It's like their final 
confession now. You know, they, 'Coach, I was one of those guys that sent 
the fax.' 'Oh, it's okay. It's all right, you know. You didn't know. I 
understand,' you know. " 

At USC, Carroll finally found his calling - his boyish, enthusiastic style 
that seemed too soft for the NFL has been a perfect fit with younger 
athletes. He is now one of the highest paid college football coaches in 
the country, earning an estimated $4 million a year. 

Carroll says one of the real secrets to his success can be found on the 
practice field. 

"A great coach once said that the best players don't always win, the 
players that play the best do. That's why we work so hard. That's why we 
train so hard. That's why we focus so much on practicing better than 
anybody’s ever practiced before," Carroll said. 

"Better than anybody else has ever practiced before?" Pitts asked. 

"That's the whole idea, you know, you want to do things better than it's 
ever been done before or don't you," Carroll explained. 

He makes practice as much like a real game as possible - that includes 
piping in fake crowd noise during a scrimmage, letting fans in the stands, 
and learning to stop for TV commercials. 

Unlike more traditional coaches, Carroll doesn't tear down his players, he 
builds them up. 

We did see him get tough on a player when a fight broke out. "C’mon 
Christian we don't ever do stuff like that never, never do stuff like 
that. You are out of the football game. Go put your helmet down… God dawg 
it," he told a player. 

"One of our players, you know, punched a guy, you know trying to get away 
from him. I ripped his tail pretty good. But I needed to get right back to 
him and teach him what just happened, you know," Carroll explained. 

"We don't fight. Fighting is nothing in this game, it’s no aspect in this 
game. It’s just not okay, c’mon," he told the player. 

That's what he calls a teachable moment. Take a mistake and learn from it. 
It's part of a philosophy that he calls "Win Forever." 

Asked what "win forever" means to him, Carroll said, "It’s about finding 
out how good you could become at something and then making it come to 
life." 

Carroll sees that as his life's work: teach young people, not just ball 
players, to seize every opportunity and make the most of it. 

That's why, during football season, and more often in the off season, this 
high profile celebrity coach goes into some of the most violent 
neighborhoods in Los Angeles recruiting not star athletes but gang members 
in an effort to end gang violence. 

He started these night time trips in 2006. There were nearly 300 gang 
related murders in L.A. that year alone. "The need was so obvious. Kids 
getting killed in the streets is just not okay. It's not all right," he 
told Pitts. 

Two days after the Trojans beat Ohio State, he took “60 Minutes” to Watts, 
reluctant to let us bring our cameras because he didn't want the young 
people he met to think he was looking for publicity or exploiting them. He 
usually travels with no entourage and no security. This housing project is 
ruled by one of L.A.'s most notorious gangs, the Crips.

Many of these young men have already spent years in prison for gang 
related crimes. It's here where Pete Carroll believes his skills as a 
motivator and teacher might really pay off. Just like he's taught football 
players from across the country to play as a team, Carroll’s trying to 
teach bitter rivals they can live together without violence. 

"You could quiet this thing down. Wouldn't that be frickin' awesome if you 
did it? Think if you were the guys who did it here, ain't never been done 
before," he said. 

While he was talking, police helicopters constantly flew overhead. "They 
call it the ghetto bird…a ghetto bird," one man explained. 

They're used to those ghetto birds, but they're not used to having someone 
like Pete Carroll give them his cell phone number. And this was all 
happening at 1 a.m. in the middle of football season. 

Why is he doing this? 

"I don't even care. The last thing I wanna do is be tryin' to get 
something out of it. I have no connection to that thought. None," he told 
Pitts. 

Pete Carroll has given his own money - and raised even more cash - to fund 
a program where about 50 former gang members will take courses in conflict 
resolution and first aid. They’re being trained to help stop violence in 
the tough neighborhoods. 

The night “60 Minutes” went out with Carroll, some guys from the 
neighborhood asked him to talk to a group of boys they were working with - 
boys, they said, who badly needed some coaching. 

Carroll is as at home with these boys as he is with his players. They 
straightened right up for the coach, pants and all. 

The boys gave him a chilling reminder of what they’re up 
against. "Everybody know we are going to die one day or we might go to 
jail," one boy said. 

"When I go to sleep I think it I don't know why I think about myself in a 
casket like I don't know why like," another said. 

"To just say I am going to die or I am going to jail and live with that. 
That’s more likely to happen the longer you keep thinking that," Carroll 
told Pitts. "That's why it's so important for us to go and create hope. 
And to help people with their vision and to help them understand what they 
can become."

"People at home will listen to you and say, 'God bless him, but he's naïve 
to think you can…coach your way out of this problem,'" Pitts remarked. 

"That's okay. I've run up across that before. And, and people that think 
that, I just ask 'em, 'Have that opinion. Just don't talk to anybody about 
it for a while. Just give us a chance,'" Carroll said, 

When he says "us," he means the members of an organization he started 
called "A Better L.A." Pete Carroll brought together educators, 
politicians, former gang members, police officers - groups that had been 
working separately. Now they are all on the same team, working to stop 
gang violence. 

Sergeant Curtis Woodle, a 13-year veteran of the L.A. gang wars, was 
skeptical when Coach Carroll first got involved. "I thought it was a joke, 
to be honest," Woodle admitted. 

Not any more. He credits Pete Carroll’s group with helping to reduce the 
murder rate, and changing the attitudes of street-hardened police 
officers. "He's actually rejuvenated me as a police officer. He's actually 
given me hope," Woodle said. 

"So, it sounds like you are drinkin' the Kool-Aid big time?" Pitts asked. 

"Look, as long as I can see kids who would not normally walk around here, 
maybe we had a crime scene under a sheet, I'm happy," the officer said. 

And so are a group of boys, who got their first chance to watch a USC 
practice session. These are the boys Pete Carroll met in the projects. He 
invited them, not to make football players out of them, but to show them a 
different and better world than the one they know. 

Pete Carroll moves easily between both his teams. To him, they are all 
just young men who need a coach. 

"Each person holds so much power within themselves that needs to be let 
out. And sometimes they just need a little nudge, a little direction, a 
little support, a little coaching. And, you know, the greatest of things 
can happen," Carroll said. 

Asked if he believes that, Carroll said, "No, I know that’s true. I know 
that's true. I've seen it. I'm livin' it." 

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapse Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


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