Pete Carroll's Winning Coaching Style

If your image of a football coach is of a tough guy with a permanent scowl on his face, then you haven't met Pete Carroll. He's the coach of the University Of Southern California Trojans, one of the top college teams in the nation. He's also upbeat, optimistic, and seems to have a permanent smile on his face. And no wonder: he has the highest winning percentage of any active coach in Division 1 football.

As Byron Pitts first reported last December, Carroll took a once great college team that had been on a 20-year slump and turned it around, winning two national championships. If you're a football fan, you may already know all that, but there's another side of Pete Carroll that you probably don't know. He's taken his coaching ability far beyond the football field, to a place you might never expect.

"This is how we like it. This is how we want it to be. We 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," 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?" Carroll asked.

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, 53 NFL players, and 33 All-Americans in just eight 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 over Ohio State.

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.

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 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 14-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 anymore. 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."

Produced by Cathy Olian and Joyce Cordero