We can learn a lot from Pete Carroll's hair. I finished watching the NFL Conference Championships and got my fill of the
scowling hat wearing brothers Harbaugh or the stone faced hoodie wearing
Belichick and the guy from Atlanta. They all take lessons from the same
coaching school where coaches don’t show emotion and never ever ever (to quote
Taylor Swift) smile. They know how to scowl, stare, and in Jim Harbaugh’s case,
simmer in coiled anger until exploding in ax-murder tantrums. Watching this
breed of coach made me miss Pete Carroll ex of USC and presently of the
Seahawks. More to the point, I missed Pete’s hair because his hair tells us a
lot about how to be a good coach.
I teach at Washington so I do
not see Carroll as a paragon. He is a ferocious and cold-eyed competitor and
built a superb dominating program at USC. After talking to friends, I don’t
believe he fled to escape the looming sanctions that hit the program (I do
believe he should have known about the Reggie Bush issues and under modern NCAA
rules would be responsible for the mess)—I do believe he had unfinished
business with the NFL, believed he had reached his college ceiling at USC and
had an amazing offer to build an NFL program his way from Paul Allen. Carroll
had nothing more to prove to himself in college football but a whole new world
to conquer in professional football.
I decided that Pete’s hair (https://www.facebook.com/LovelyLovelyHair)
held the key after watching him
coach the Seahawks to one of their seven improbable fourth quarter victories
this year. His mind never stopped racing; his jaw never stopped working on the
gum; and his emotions flashed across his face in utter transparency. When the
team made a mistake you knew; when they succeeded you knew. But above all his
platinum hair flawlessly disheveled remained resolutely in place through all
the emotional, intellectual and physical gyrations of the game. Storm, suprises,
violence, purpose and platinum order amid the game chaos.
Carroll freely admits that his
emotions sometimes got the better of him and he makes high-risk calls. He now
expects his assistants to get in his face and remind him of the real risks
association with his own high-roller instincts honed so successfully in college.
Carroll likes to take chances, big chances, and in college with USC’s dominance,
it usually worked. Professional ball creates a different calculus and the
talent differential will not carry a team; Carroll has learned this the hard way.
It tempers his emotions, but won’t dampen them.
He understands that his own
emotions can catalyze and support his players. In college this matters more
profoundly with 20 year-old young men, but Carroll believes that professional
players are not so jaded that contagious energy cannot be created and sustained
on the sidelines by the coaches. He is correct.
I do not want to romanticize the
hard driving relentless and ruthless side of being a coach. In his first two
years, the Seahawk roster churned through players faster than any three other
teams combined. Like all winning coaches, Carroll must and will replaceunderperforming players, even veterans and players he respects and likes, with
younger, hungrier and more talented players. His staff has scoured every heap
of players and every league, but once in Seattle, players get a real chance to
earn their shot. His team could fall apart with its intense never ending
“everyone competes every day” philosophy, but he infuses this with a passion
and exciting dimension that players actually can sense the fun that brought
them to the game originally.
Unlike the Belichik/Harbaugh School
of coaching, Carroll still believes that football can be fun for players and
for coaches. He knows how demanding the game can be. He pushes his players and
will cut and churn the roster to get talent and fit. He knows how quickly
players and coaches go from hero to goat; but he remembers at his core that this
fiercely competitive game is a game and a fun one at that. His entire approach
from recruiting, to training, to cutting to game play is infused with that celebration.
Belichick’s players will
dutifully say that they grew under him, and he got the best out of them. No one
will say they enjoyed it or had fun. Jim Harbaugh’s players form an us against
them cult and play with a chip and intensity that scares everyone. The Seahawks
play hard, physical, brute and intimidating football. Their defense anchors
them which surprises folks when they want to picture Pete Carroll as a laid
back west coast kind of guy. The players know the drill and costs but like
playing for him and will acknowledge they are having fun in the process. Dare I say it playing for Carroll can be cool.
When he used to coach at USC
and regularly whump us, I wondered if Carroll did not have a portrait of Dorian
Grey somewhere—you know, where the real Pete Carroll had a widow’s beak, age
spots and grew fat and waddled. I still worry about it sometime, but I’ve seen
the wrinkles and crinkles, the minor blemishes and know that the hair takes
really really good product and blow-drying.
Coaches should take a cue from
Pete Carroll’s hair in its glorious tousled impeccability (is that a word?)—Passionate
but focused; aware but decisive; disciplined but open; unruly but never
disarrayed.
