Oft Off Topic
Pete Carroll Pt. 1: The Samurai Jack of Football
This episode we talk about legendary football coach Pete Carrol. We're going to talk about Petes early years and how he developed his sports philosophy by traveling from college to college.
In this first episode we're going from birth until his sting with the San Fran 49ers in the 90s.
Feel free to check out our website for links to our YouTube channel and more!
https://oftofftopic.com/
Our host Nathan also does art in addition to this podcast, including having is own sticker store. Please check it out and purchase anything that strikes your fancy.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/stickersbytownsend
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Even if you didn't like the show, please do it, we appreciate it. You can also email us at OftOffTopic@gmail.com and let us know what you like or don't like, maybe we will even read your email on our show!
Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more Oft Off Topic!
This episode we talk about legendary football coach Pete Carrol. We're going to talk about Petes early years and how he developed his sports philosophy by traveling from college to college.
In this first episode we're going from birth until his sting with the San Fran 49ers in the 90s.
Feel free to check out our website for links to our YouTube channel and more!
https://oftofftopic.com/
Our host Nathan also does art in addition to this podcast, including having is own sticker store. Please check it out and purchase anything that strikes your fancy.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/stickersbytownsend
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Even if you didn't like the show, please do it, we appreciate it. You can also email us at OftOffTopic@gmail.com and let us know what you like or don't like, maybe we will even read your email on our show!
Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more Oft Off Topic!
Pete Carroll, legend of the football coaching scene, coach at USC and coach of my Seattle Seahawks right up until a month or two ago. Nate, what do you know about Pete Carroll? He's dead, is he? I don't know. Okay, I was like wow, news came in this morning.
Nate:You're like right in front of something, google something.
Shaun:Okay, I know I was like nothing about him. They got a lot about him.
Shaun:Then I had a 50-50 shot of that being correct or not, so I went this is very, very true and, honestly, I haven't Googled his name today, so you could still be right. We will consider this Schrodinger's Carroll. We will not know if he's alive or not until we Google it. We will refuse to look it up. Yep, we will refuse to look it up. Thus, we don't know.
Shaun:So we can talk about him in the past tense if we want to make really weird people out. Oh yeah, it's a little bit of a future and it's accurate. Yeah, and yes, pete Carroll is a football, also American football. I know we have some international listeners A couple of people picked us up over the pond and the such, so and I'm also aware not everybody really likes football. So we're gonna be talking more about Pete Carroll, the person and his philosophies in his life, than we are about the actual sport of football, just because, yeah, football it's one of those things if you like it, you like it. If you don't, well, it's kind of a really tough hog to stick. It's boring. I couldn't think of a better term than that. Honestly, it kind of is. If I recall, there is a steady, I think the actual like time in play when the ball is actually being thrown or run around. I think it's like seven minutes maybe, if that.
Nate:I will admit the last Super Bowl was actually pretty interesting in the end, I mean just because it was so tight yeah it was one of the better Super Bowls I'd seen. That was more like I don't know. It was interesting just because it was so all the stakes involved. But your average football game is it's.
Shaun:Yeah, especially if you're watching two not good teams. Super Bowl is kind of skewed because you know they got the big old hoopla production and it's the two in theory best teams in the NFL.
Nate:Right, they used that as they should.
Shaun:Yeah, it's not like back in the day when I had to watch the Seahawks, when they were only one, two games an entire season. Man, yeah, that was painful. I wound up watching it as just like a form of self-flagulation. You're gonna be a Seahawks fan. You have to go through this. Yeah, no, I don't want to Too bad, no, I don't want to. Yes, you must. You must sit here for three hours and watch your Seahawks flounder.
Shaun:All right, so much of my source for this is Pete's own book when Forever Live, work and Play Like a Champion. Read that thing. It's not a bad book. You can get some fun football stories, learn about Pete, what makes him tick, and you get to learn about his philosophy of always compete. Pete is a word that Pete loves because his name is in it. Haha, clever writing right there. Yeah, hey, man, that's what. Three years of creative writing classes in college and two years of improv will get you that kind of humor. I appreciate it. Yeah, hey, gotta take them jokes. I go with a Fawzi Bear College of Comedy. You just throw everything in a wall and see what sticks. Maybe in the future they'll appreciate it more. Well, it's a bear with a. He was a boss man. I liked him, he was good, all right.
Shaun:Pete Carroll was born September 15th 1951, to Rita and Jim Carroll, in the sourdough capital of the world of San Francisco. Pete, by his own accord, was a super competitive child and excelled at sports all the way through his middle school years. And the way he talks about how he is always a competitive child, it kind of makes me really hope that. Like he was competitive from birth, like he came shooting out that birth canal and he was like all right, doc, I made a pretty good time there. Jammy back in there, I'm gonna see if I can beat that time. You ready, mom? And she was just like all right, that kind of competitiveness, yep, competitive newborn. I can be born faster and better than that time. Give me a few more practice runs.
Shaun:All the other babies just tip aside. Yeah, exactly, dr Poole, I should stop watching Time me on. This. Dr was like well, this is unorthodox, but okay, and the doctor did it Anyways. So Pete, very competitive child and was actually a pretty good athlete for a little kid. But once he got to high school, things kind of changed because whereas everybody else went through puberty, pete Carroll did not. In fact he kind of got a blow to his ego because when he was a freshman he went to try out for the football team. They're like you're too scrawny. You got to go to a doctor and get a doctor's note as a liability thing Because as a freshman he was five foot four and 110 pounds and they were afraid he was going to get snapped in half.
Nate:As they should have been.
Shaun:Yeah, he said it was kind of a blow to the ego. He was like, yeah, I need a doctor's note because I'm so small Actually I guess his voice was higher than that I need a doctor's note because I'm gonna go play football Boy boy howdy, boy howdy. So he got his doctor's note, went to play football and because he was noticeably smaller and everybody not quite as athletic and not quite as testosterone filled, he basically struggled throughout majority of his high school career. By the time he rolled around to a senior he had finally puber baited that's the technical term for going through puberty. But yeah, his slow start kind of meant he didn't set any records at the school or anything like that.
Shaun:However, if you do go to his Wikipedia page, it states that in high school he was a multi-sport star in football, basketball and baseball, earning the school's athlete of the year's honors as a senior in 1969.
Shaun:Pete said he was an awful athlete in high school for the most part. So to get the bobbin, I actually clicked on those little references on Wikipedia to be like hey, where did they get this story from? And all the stories kind of just led to Pete Carroll being inducted into his high school Hall of Fame and in that article they said that he lettered in three sports and even won an Athletic Award as a senior. And they kind of just took that and ran with it because they're like, ooh, lettering, that sounds like he did really good in high school. But that just that doesn't really mean that you did great in high school, it just means you played the majority of the games. I believe. And also, to you know, just because you went athlete of the year where doesn't necessarily mean you're the greatest athlete, it might just mean you're the most you know motivational athlete, motivational motivation.
Nate:His terrible technique motivated you do better.
Shaun:Kids are awful at the game. But you got, moxie, we've got this mascot uniform here for you right here now. Hop in there and start dancing. I said dance boy, dance boy, dance for me, dance for me and your local Catholic priest. We enjoy it. Oh, in fact I'm doing like a northeastern accent in San Francisco.
Nate:Yeah, yeah, I was thinking, this carnava carnaval Barker.
Shaun:Oh yeah, carnaval Barker. Yeah, I was. I was kind of going for like a lot of history up on that hill. Yeah, yeah, ground south, don't go barren. Y'all cat up there. Especially don't bury our child. That would be illegal in many ways anyways. So the coaches did notice that uh Pete was a very positive fellow and he was good at getting all the other players hyped up and he was good with the X's and nodes of uh football.
Shaun:So one year his football coach invited him to a summer camp and uh Was like hey, you want to be, you know, basically our volunteer coach and coach these, you know, middle school kids. And Pete said okey-dokey, and that was his first exposure to being a football coach and he enjoyed it and apparently he was pretty good at it. I think so. I mean yeah, because I mean, hey, he went on to be pretty good at it, but by his own account. One thing, pete says because he was a mediocre athlete at best but he always wanted to be the great athlete, so he put like all his effort into uh being an athlete and apparently his grades did not do very well because of it. In fact he it sounds like he barely passed only with the help of his very uh, helpful and supportive parents, probably getting him a tutor or something like that, something.
Nate:Yeah. Yeah, he's, you know paying, paying is uh Teachers off yeah. Yeah, okay, just let it pass.
Shaun:I mean, he's idiot but we're rich, how about we buy your school a new charter bus and we call it the Pete Carroll Express. So yeah, pete, basically not great grades, not that great of an athlete, barely made a high school. But he did actually manage to find himself a uh spot at Marin College down the road. And when he was at Marin College he decided to, you know, put a little bit more effort into his studies, put a little more effort into his uh football playing abilities, and After two years he improved everything enough that in 1971 he moves to the University of the Pacific in Stockton, california, stockton, home to the only Dillard's in northern California. University of the Pacific, university of the Pacific, that's the name of it. Yeah, university of the Pacific in Stockton, home to the only Dillard's in northern California. That's literally bragged about on the Stockton's tourism site, the only uh location of the only Dillard's in northern California, apparently, stockton. Not a lot going on there. Yeah, clearly We'll learn more about Stockton later. Actually, mrs Mabel's chickens got out again.
Nate:Ha, that's the front page newspaper, page threes timmy little timmy got run over by car.
Shaun:Yeah right but the first one is like the chickens. Oh my god, the fireman get chickens out of tree.
Nate:Hilarity ensues you say violate the chickens. I thought you said violate.
Shaun:I'm like what is the 13th chicken violator fest? Come on down and violate your own chicken, bring yours, or use one of the community chickens.
Nate:I got one movie I saw. Oh man, I'm like, uh, no, so that it was a that comedy. When you download for me a while back, uh, flesh Gordon, flesh Gordon, flesh Exactly it was. You can't have sex. Those chickens get the chip to go, or something. Yeah, well, the ship.
Shaun:Yeah, the ship was powered by chickens having sex, right actually. I think it was just powered by sex. But chickens were just the easiest ones to get to have sex, so they just had like a room full of chickens going at it around the clock. But yeah, then they got shot with a flaccid ray that made all the chickens uh Limp and then flesh or no.
Shaun:flesh yeah except for flesh corn, who is unlimpable, and he just went there. He's like all right chickens, here we go, they said. He's just like in this pile of chickens, holding one under his arm like feathers in his mouth. What a dumb. I love dumb or amazing. Little bit of both, little bit calling me calling me.
Shaun:We call that so bad, it's good. So two years at the weirdly named University of the Pacific and, uh, that's two years of improvement, pete, and he got himself an all-coast player award, and an all conference player award is a senior year there. This led to him getting a chance in 1973 to attend the training camp with the world football league team of Honolulu, the Honolulu Hawaiians. Honolulu, where it's illegal to an annoy any animal in the public park I'm kind of okay with that law. Why would you need to annoy an animal in a public park, I mean, I guess. But it's weird. It does sound like it's one of those things where you know they kind of made that law so they could just haul anybody in for anything at a time. Hey, I saw you look at that duck. Kind of funny, you seducing that duck. That sounds like you're annoying it. That's double knowing that duck with your dick. Yeah, I just want to show you what a real one looks like, not one of those Weird corkscrew things they have. However, this training camp was not actually held in Honolulu but in Riverside, california Riverside. The first naval oranges in California were planted there. It's the birthplace of California citrus industry. These are all actual, true facts, by the way.
Shaun:Yeah, so a couple of weeks into training camp, and Pete determines that in order to make the team, he needs to pull out all the stops and show off that. You know, despite him not being the biggest dude in the world, he can hit just as hard as anybody and he could just play with the big boys. So During practice he goes I'm gonna just lay the biggest hit on this dude and impress the coaches. So he squares himself up, goes rushing at the guy Christ, land the biggest hit ever in the history and completely misses and lands on his shoulder. And he says, to this day he can still hear and feel that crunch that happened in his shoulder. You know one of those sounds that you hear and you're like, wow, that's a life-altering sound if I've ever heard one. Yep, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Yep, he had one of those. It's just that shoulder was done. Uh, yeah, that noise signaled he was done being a football player. Just full stop, right there.
Shaun:Well, as the bible famously, famously says, god doesn't separate a shoulder without offering a coaching job. And in 1974, his old alma mater, the university of the pacific tigers, come calling and say We've got a coaching opportunity for you, pete. And Pete goes, oh boy, and back to Stockton he goes. Stockton, the asparagus capital of the world. San Joaquin asparagus festival is held there. What, the asparagus festival? Yeah, stockton is the asparagus capital of the world. I, I guess.
Nate:Hey.
Shaun:You looked it up and there was a few places that actually said that is the asparagus capital of the world. Oh, there's several people fighting over the title. Oh, no, just like, please be like. This is where the most asparagus has grown in the world, kind of thing like, which is weird because every time I buy asparagus it's from Mexico, so I don't know what they're talking about.
Nate:But I make special trips in Mexico just for that. I swear just for that.
Shaun:No, no, no. I pay people to bring it up with them when they're bringing up other stuff from below the border and we're bringing that one shipment. Grab a bunch of that asparagus grandma grows. It's really good. So, anyways, pete, he's coaching at the college and has a job there, and he decides I'm gonna take some college courses. While I'm here, uh, doing my thing, and his whole plan was this was take some college courses and that way he could, uh, be a teacher in high school and coach in high school football. You know, he seems like one of those guys would be good at that. He's a very friendly, affable fella. However, there would be one class there at a college that would change the way that he saw sports forever. Ancient, dark art of sports psychology Bump, bump, psychology that's a scary word to somebody. Not psychology, oh dear god. Not psychology, oh my god. They'll shrink your brain, nate. Remember when they used to call psychology shrinks? Yeah, I wonder why.
Nate:I think it was like they shrink.
Shaun:Yeah, I think it was a shrunk your brain and made you stupid, or something like that, I don't know. Anyways, in this sports psychology class he was introduced to one, abraham Maslow's. Maslow, born in 1908 and died in 1970, was known mainly for two things. One, he was known for Maslow's hammer, which is a phrase that is probably popularly put at if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Um, you probably heard that saying before, haven't you?
Nate:Yeah, yeah.
Shaun:Yeah yeah, that came from his book the psychology of science from 1966. So now you know where that saying comes from. However, the other thing is mainly known for is he's one of the first psychologists to study happy people instead of depressed or crazy Full. Most psychologists want to know why crazy be crazy. Maslow wanted to know what made happy people happy Seems kind of a good Train of thought also. That way you don't have to work with crazy people. You're gonna work with happy, well adjusted people.
Shaun:So yeah yeah, yeah, maybe he was kind of playing 4d chess there with us. Be like, I don't want to work with crazy people. I know I'll study the happy people. I'll study happy rich people on their yachts and they're during their garden parties. Yes, yes, yes, hmm, yeah, that that guy was on to something, wouldn't he? Yeah, he was. Yeah, I was gonna think about like, oh yeah, either go hang out in a psych ward all day or you can just go, you know, play tennis with some rich people and see how they're Coping. So what mainly caught Pete's uh mind and I was Maslow's books Towards a psychology of being. 4.3 stars off of 39 reviews on Amazon, sold over 100,000 copies. But it's also a textbook for college courses. So there's that. And because it's a college book, it's also expensive 89 dollars for the ebook.
Nate:I mean, yeah, that would, that would do it, would. It's like you have to buy it.
Shaun:Yeah, yeah, exactly. And those things are such a scam too because they make you buy a new book every year, even though they all they do is just change like two pages in the whole thing. Yeah yeah, you know it goes Apparently too. There's actually ways around it online now, just like reprint the books up there, which is good because screw those or they put them online the entire thing, yeah, yeah so so.
Shaun:Also, for a comparison, betty Crocker cookbook sold 75 million. So and that you know, grand scheme of things, 100,000. Not that much, no, not in the grand scheme of things, no, but anyways, back to dr Maslow, dr Maslow, dr Maslow, dr Maslow, dr Maslow, dr Maslow, dr Maslow, dr Maslow, anyways, uh, this book is all about the hierarchy of needs ideology, where people have categories of needs and these needs do need to be arranged in like kind of like a staircase ladder or a pyramid, as that picture I showed you earlier. And Basically, at the bottom rung of this pyramid, you got the needs that must be filled, and once you fill those needs, you can move up to the next rung of the pyramid and fill up those ones and do, do, do, do, do, and you can only successfully move up the ladder as you, uh, fulfill each little step of the pyramid.
Shaun:And, for example, yeah, oh, no, I lost that picture it starts with things like, uh, physical necessities like food, water, air and the such, and once you fulfill those needs, you can move on to the other stuff, such as, you know, security of the body, employment, love, friendship, this and that, having kids, uh, basically, they worded in the book like, essentially, someone starving to death won't be thinking about love, and someone who's drowning won't be thinking about how they're hungry. Uh, I mean, that kind of makes sense. That's pretty basic.
Nate:I don't know one there.
Shaun:Yeah, it's like I'm on fire. Well, I'm not really worried about those bills now, but well, I mean you might be, depending on how big the bills are.
Nate:Right, oh yeah, you're almost like I don't want to die, but at the same time, yeah, you're like stop and drop and roll.
Shaun:Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Nate:Maybe if I just stand here and die, Uh well, that's a decision you want to make real fast because you don't want to get disfigured from fire.
Shaun:That's you know, right, you don't want to make it. You know, three quarters of the way through burning to death and uh, change your mind, yeah, no. So once you fill up most of your pyramid and you get to the very top tier of that pyramid and all your basic needs have been met, that's when you're finally free to go out and make your impact on the world. You're basically, basically, your gas tank is full and now you're ready to kick some butt. This is when you want to do your full self improvement and go whole, whole hog on making yourself the best person you could be. And uh, basically, this is when people can reach their full potential and go super saiyan, if you will. So, uh, basically think of this pyramid here as a power meter and as it fills up, once gets to the top, boom, you're a super saiyan, or a superhuman, I guess, or a better yet. I guess that's more of when you can become a superhuman because you know you're not worrying about stuff like food, money, family, self-esteem, right, yeah, I guess.
Shaun:Some actual examples like, uh, mazlows pyramid it's got the five levels to it and you know, at the bottom is breathing food, water, not being on fire. One up from that is safety, which is which is stuff like housing, employment, family safety again not being on fire. Then about that? You got family. You got love and belonging, which is family, friendship, etc. Then, above that, you got a steam even this one Did I?
Shaun:Yeah, not being on fire. Oh yeah, not being on fire. Yes, I love not being on fire. If you're going to row with a Duke, you're rowing with that.
Nate:Yeah, right.
Shaun:I'm glad you called me out on that, steve. About that is, you know, self confidence, respecting yourself, respecting others, respecting the fact you're not on fire currently. And the top of the pyramid, you know where that big eyeball is that watches us all, that part of the pyramid, that's the self-actualization place. That's where you get up and you just stare out of that eyeball and see the world for what it really is.
Nate:The lie is the man gives you.
Shaun:Yes, exactly, it's like putting on those glasses and they live. Anyways, this ideology got Pete thinking, and this is actually kind of the quote straight from his book. What if my job as a coach isn't so much to force or coerce performance as it is to create situations where players develop the confidence to set their talents free and pursue their potential to its fullest extent? What if my job as coach is to really prove to these kids how good they really are and how good they could possibly come, and that they are truly capable of high level performance, which basically breaks down to more or less instead of like yelling at the players to run faster and stuff, he wants to kind of fill up their pyramid for them, or help them fill up their pyramid as much as they can and use that as their ability to make them run faster, or you know, because once their mind is clear of all these little problems and minor inconveniences, then they can fully focus on being a football player.
Nate:My God, jim has not been do so well. Quick get him a hooker.
Shaun:Ha, pretty much, yes, that was pretty much. It. Get that man Ace Ball hooker, and then he went out and he won the Heisman trophy the next game, for next year, I guess. So, oh, yeah, and also right around this time with Pete's talking about going to college or taking the college course in sports psychology, he says that one of the benefits of schooling and coaching in Northern California was quote unquote the accessibility to innovative thinking. That made me look at the world in a new way. He means weed people. He's talking about pot. Nice, yeah, he doesn't actually say that in a book, but you know, northern California, full of ways to see things a new way.
Nate:Yeah, well, remember, cancel Nudge, nudge.
Shaun:I'm nudging you. Yeah, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. You've been doing that for five minutes straight. Move on, please.
Shaun:I am not gonna give you a high five. Yeah ha. So Pete's the coach at University of the Pacific and their team coach is a very old school kind of coach, sort of like hey, you know, the morale or the beatings will continue until morale improves. So when Pete runs up to him he's like I got this new thing we should try called sports psychology. You can kind of guess how that kind of went over with the old school coaches. An example he gave us at the beginning Pete kind of wanted to initiate the players into the whole sports psychology thing.
Shaun:So he pulled a bunch of the players that he's in charge of and he's like all right, I want to ask you guys what do you think we could do to make practices better? How do you think you can improve you know? So on and so forth. Just basically, you know workshopping ideas out of them. Well, the old school coach did not like that. I'm just crying him aside. He's like that's how you make soft players. You never listen to players. You tell them what they do, blah, blah, blah. You tell them what's up and down and right and wrong. Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know those old school kind of coaches, drill sergeants, but obviously yeah exactly Control freak assholes, yeah.
Shaun:But obviously this method wasn't really working because the team was pretty historically averaged by all accounts, including their record at the time, which was five wins, six losses and one tie. So Pete is a philosophy kind of got shot down with the bat, but he was not deterred. He was like well, I'm going to keep plugging away here, learning more about sports psychology and trying to crack this hard shell that is my coach. But that didn't go very long because he decided to take off. Make sure he was like well, I think I've kind of topped out here. Maybe I'm going to go travel the world, coach some other places, learn some things. And this begins what I like to think of as Pete Carroll's Samurai Jack phase. So for those of you who don't know Samurai Jack, historical character from Japan, to fight off invaders he had to travel all around the known world, learn from the greatest masters of war and come back and use all those skills. Anyways, it's worth looking at. Or Batman, or Batman, or Batman. Oh yeah, that's true.
Nate:Batman would have worked. But you know what you went with Samurai Jack. We're going with Samurai Jack. We're going with Samurai.
Shaun:Jack, I took the path less traveled on that one.
Nate:Well, because mainly because at the end he failed. Samurai Jack does all this awesome stuff, attacks a coup and gets his act. He wins kind of, but they get teleported, so he loses. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll see Maybe there's some action, I will Shut up. Have a good day, maybe we got some plays going.
Shaun:Oh yeah, I forgot to bring up too. I'm going to compare Pete Carroll to a Star Wars character, and I think he'll be pleasantly surprised too. I'm going to need to get all the way up my back.
Nate:Yeah.
Shaun:Damn you, damn you, man. So Pete Carroll hits the road and goes around to various schools learning what he can. 1977, he finds himself working with legendary college coach and one of his coaching idols, lou Holts, at the University of Arkansas, arkansas, where both Angel Soft and Quiltern Northern toilet paper is produced. That's kind of neat, I guess. Hey, if you use toilet paper it might come from Arkansas. Nice, main America. That's kind of neat. Yeah, that's me, I guess. Yeah, lou Holts was actually one of the one of the winningest coaches of all time in college. I don't think he still is, but he was at one point. So Pete got to learn some fun stuff there and the next six years would see him traveling like a Ronan, going from Arkansas.
Shaun:And then in 1978, he left to Iowa where hogs outnumber people four to one. 1979, he goes to Ohio State, home of the only non-rectangular flag in the USA. And then 1980 through 1982, saw Pete go to North Carolina, the native home of the Venus flytrap. And finally, in 1983, he goes back to Pacific College in Stockton. Stockton, it used to be named Mudtown. Yeah, we learn about Stockton Woods. Yeah, mudtown, it's because there is a bunch of sticky adobe mud all around the place that people used to build houses back then.
Nate:Oh, there you go. Yeah, I don't think Mudtown Like we want to change that.
Shaun:It sounds like something from Mad Max, doesn't it? We're Mudtown. What are you known for? Asparagus, oh, my god.
Shaun:Yeah, during these travels Pete would learn techniques from many of the great coaches. From Bud Grant Pete learned the importance of observing human behavior. From Monty Kiffin he learned the importance of having a consistent philosophy. Monty would say if you change who you are year to year, you'll never get great at anything. And that actually makes sense. If you're constantly changing who you are, you won't have time to learn who you are and get better at it. Do one thing, do it well. I guess.
Shaun:From Tim Galloway he learned the importance of a player having a quiet mind, a clear and zen-like mind to achieve their best performance, which apparently is actually a scientific thing which kind of goes with this needs pyramid being full. I guess the less stressed a player is. Well, when a player gets stressed or under a lot of tension, I guess the body naturally tenses up muscles and you naturally lose some flexibility and mobility in your muscles and joint just due to stress. So if you're stressed you can't really athleticize the best you can. If you're real, lucy Goosey and all happy and stress-free, apparently you have better range of motion, better strength, better this and that, which I found kind of interesting, I guess. I mean it makes sense.
Shaun:I guess 1984, and Pete finally breaks into the big time, the National Football League, and joins the staff of the Buffalo Bills, buffalo, where our bars don't close until 4 AM. 1985, and he finds himself in another cold as hell city in Minnesota, raise, a member of the coaching staff for the Vikings for five seasons. Minnesota more turkeys are hatched there than anywhere else in the USA. A full little tidbits, yeah, yeah, random ass. If it's you, hey, you're gonna learn more in this episode than you've ever learned in your life. I'm just like giving you a knowledge enema, whether you like it or not this town is in a yeah, what was that from Batman Joker Batman yeah.
Nate:Joker saying it. You're the first time I heard that.
Shaun:I didn't know what enema was, so I was like I'm pretty sure I had to ask my parents to know. Like it's funny, you know flush water up your butt. You're like, oh well that's well.
Nate:I really thought he was saying this town, he's an enemy, but was like, how would that have like a little flair, okay, and then after a while it's like how does it really fit? You know, he cuz he doesn't have the accent the rest of the movie so. And then I realized, oh, he's saying enema, what's the enema?
Shaun:and then there was yeah, and then you learned and you're like oh well, hope I don't have to have one of those. No, hopefully not.
Nate:I'm sure one day will have to happen.
Shaun:But no, I'm sure it will be. You know, it's big inanimous Gandhi. Anyways, he was into a lot of things. Yeah, no, apparently he was into giving underage girls enemas. This is an actual thing too. So, man, I don't know.
Nate:I just don't get it. Yeah, I mean I don't get the whole poop thing, you know, or just because even like Mozart, he was all, yeah, huge shit fetish. And I just don't.
Shaun:I've heard I've heard it's a German thing. I don't know if that's true or not.
Nate:I guess maybe yeah, I just, I don't get it. Yeah, I don't get it, I don't.
Shaun:I think it's just one of these like it's verboten and forbidden there for its hot kind of thing.
Nate:Yes, but me even with most like kinks that's. It might not be my thing and I might even find it like, oh, you'll never even see me getting more close to that, but at least it's like I kind of.
Shaun:Yeah, you're like, I can get where people are coming from.
Nate:Yeah when you're like, even like people with suck on toes of dear god, no huh, yeah, I would, mine sucked it. I don't know you're fighting or near my face, haha, but like I can also get, I get it. You know, it's, it's fine. Yeah, that's your thing, that's your thing. But the moment excrement comes into play and like, oh yeah, just no.
Shaun:They saw their dog rolling in poo when they were real little kinder like huh. Maybe there's something to that. But yeah, I'm with you on that off-topic. We are not fecal filiacs. There's another thing you learned. So, anyways, pete is in Minnesota, you know, hanging out with the turkeys. Also, more turkeys are hatched there than in worlds in the USA. They never say anything about turkey being slaughtered there, so I guess they get exported anyways, 1990.
Shaun:And now he's off to the New York Jets and he's gonna be coaching their defense and this time he's like hey, this seems like an opportunity where I might actually be able to get a head coaching job out of the deal. So I'm gonna like lay the groundwork for me being like, hey, I want to be the head coach here, when everything you know works through, make me the head coach. No, that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, fun fact the New Jersey Nets or the New York Jets actually play in New Jersey, not New York. Weird and dumb. No, no, why, anyways, is that is yeah, yeah, I don't know, I think the New York Giants actually playing New Jersey as well, I mean they're right there, next to each other.
Shaun:I know it's literally like a bridge of drive away from each other but still, but still, you're gonna be close to the.
Nate:Yeah, you should be in New York.
Shaun:Yeah, I guess New York's prestigious in New Jersey just sounds like a hellhole, but that's what most people think about it, although I think New Jersey is mostly farmland weird to think of don't people think of New Jersey?
Nate:It's thinking the city, you know, yeah, the Jersey Shore.
Shaun:Yeah, jersey Whitefish. You know what Jersey Whitefish is? No, it's the used condoms that wash up on the beach in Jersey. Oh, jersey Shore Whitefish. Yep, I learned that from Carl on Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Shaun:It's 1994 and four years of mediocrity later and the Jets fire their head coach and peak Carol is right there to be like Give me that job. And they're like okie-dokie. Pete gets to be the head coach at the age of 43, which is actually fairly young for a head coach. Overall, this job came exactly 20 years after he got his coaching job at the University of Pacific and Stockton Stockton, the largest US city to go bankrupt over. Oh yeah, mudtown went bankrupt. Who would have thought of that? Our mud and asparagus futures didn't work out. 1994 also the year the PlayStation was released in Japan.
Shaun:So this was the first time that Pete was going to be able to fully implement all his Philosophies that he's been learning these last 20 years. You know all this college and whatnot, and he has super, duper, mega excited. So they have the first big team meeting where you know all the coaching staffs are, all the players, all the higher ups and everything, and Pete lays down how they're gonna do things. The new way. This is, you know, the sport psychology way Fill up your pyramid, super Saiyan, so on and so forth. We're gonna be the nice coaches, not the jerks.
Shaun:And everybody the staff room gets excited. They all start to like, yeah, this is cool, we're excited about this piece. Looking around the room, he's like, yeah, I've got everybody here. And then he finally locks eyes with the 80 year old owner sitting in the corner, and that man Did not have a happy look on his face. He was very much one of those old school guys, just like that one coach he was with who was just like that's not how you do things, that's not how you do things at all. Apparently Pete kind of cheesed him off because Pete and the owner would not talk the rest of the season. Oh really, yeah, he just got a good glowering and Pete was like, well, oops, pete does kind of say in hindsight he could have been a little less raw, raw, excitable about it. But yeah, whatever, there's more on the owner, I think, than anything else.
Nate:Yeah, I mean, but also he probably could give the owner a heads up. I don't know yeah.
Shaun:I thought you guys, he give the owner a hug, and I was like, ooh, that might not work either. Right, a man is supposed to never have another man outside of a hearty handshake.
Nate:The question is how they do. I mean, if he did that and they end up being dead last, then obviously Egg of his face is parking fired. But if he did all that and there was like massive improvement, they sure maybe didn't win the whole thing but, like you know, the previous season they did a crappy, and then you know seasons after that they did good well, at the end of the season they had won six games and lost 10, and that's definitely below average.
Shaun:You're not making the playoffs, you're not weighing division or nothing like that. But also, I mean, I don't remember what they were the year before that, but they were even worse. So there's very slight improvement. That's what they say improvement. Yeah, very, they're very slight. But uh, yeah, pete basically look, took a step back. He's like man, this team is gonna take a lot of work, but I think I am up to it. You know the owners don't really like me, but I can work with that. We'll get all the staff on the same page, all the players on the same page. I think I can do this.
Shaun:Next day gets a phone call saying that he's fired yeah, yeah, and at first he's devastated, but then he remembers that it was gonna be a lot of work to get them whipped into shape and that owner did not like him. So he went from being devastated first to thinking about and be like it's probably for the best, and also to, when the jets hired a peach replacement, they'll the pet press conference and the owner very smugly said I'm 80 years old and I don't have time to wait for us to win a Super Bowl. So I hired this coach that I like. He's old school. Over the next two seasons, the jets would win four games and lose 28. The owner would die in 1999 not seeing the Super Bowl he wanted. Yeah, yeah, he made his money as an oil baron so he probably was comically evil.
Shaun:So, oh, yeah, he was yeah yeah, yeah, he started by making like oil refineries in Jersey and dealing in oils.
Nate:Oh, yeah, yeah, it's all evil.
Shaun:I all I picture is just him. We all like one of those old school fat cats twirling as much as you, I'm gonna build this railroad right through old lady Puckinson's house. We go on the tracks yeah, tied to it and everything.
Nate:I keep my mustache nice and gel, so I could twirl it.
Shaun:So Pete did get fired, but also shortly after that he's inducted into the University of the Pacific Athletic Hall of Fame in Stockton, california, stockton. The most famous celebrity to come from there is Chris Isaac. It sounds kind of familiar but I don't know. He's like a musician, slash actor or something I know.
Nate:Chris Isaac Stockton, american singer, songwriter and guitarist. Come on, let me see your face, if I know you. If I see your face, I might know you never seen him for life.
Shaun:Ha Ha he does kind of have a generic name though, chris Isaac.
Nate:Yeah, I don't know. It sounds like I thought I was some kind of like I don't know castor.
Shaun:Yeah it sounds like he was one of those names. It was like really big on America's Got Talent or something a few years ago that everybody yeah, something like that.
Nate:Yeah, something like that I've heard this day before, but now I've never seen this. Do forever.
Shaun:Yeah, I didn't look up picture, but didn't he just kind of look like generic white guy 104 holding guitar?
Nate:Yeah, yeah, you know. You know the very unique picture that's almost never seen a white guy holding guitar.
Shaun:Well, when you get, when you're pasting dating profile, cast ever either holding a guitar, hold a fish or, I guess, hold a baby.
Nate:Yeah, the biggest picture on here is it like the whole, it's black or white, kind of the light shining down a huge contrast With the shadows real black and the you know whatever. Like very. This is my guitar. This is who.
Shaun:I am, and it's black and white, so you know I'm thoughtful and brooding.
Nate:It's also looks old. So I mean, the black and white is probably just because that's the kind of film they had, but I do also stay. Well, they had color back. This was like the 30s.
Shaun:Yeah, color film goes back quite a ways. I have seen that, though, where they post like pictures of protests in like the 80s and 90s, but they put make them all black and white, and so they look way older than they are. Look how long the struggle's been going on. Yeah, feels a little dishonest but.
Nate:But that being said, the 80s and 90s was yeah, but not.
Shaun:they did have color TV and color photos back then, though. So there, yeah, yeah.
Nate:I just still still funny. I said like 80s, 90s, yeah, I think you'd see the other day.
Shaun:I mean uh yeah, so we are in 1995. Pete Carroll has been inducted into the University of the Pacific Athletic Hall of Fame. Also in that year Pete gets a job with the San Francisco 49ers and gets to work under legendary coaches George Seaford and Bill Walsh. They would teach Pete many, many things, among those the importance of contingency planning. If you train and plan for every possible outcome, you need not fear results. And I'm pretty sure that's like literally from the art of war by Sun Zou.
Nate:That sounds like a little more profound than probably what they.
Shaun:Yeah, yeah, it's probably, as one of those things, been around a while. I'm guessing, right. Yeah, if you know yourself and know your enemy, you need not fear the results of a thousand battle. Also, when he is with the San Francisco 49ers, he would meet NFL legend Jerry Rice, whom Pete said it was the most competitive man he had ever met in his life, and learned a lot about how to be competitive from Jerry. And also, just you know, jerry Rice was a wide receiver, widely considered probably the best player in his position, if not he's learned to become competitive.
Nate:Is that something that's taught or you just are? That was more of a personality trait versus like a learned skill.
Shaun:Well, here's what Jerry's secret was to be competitive. Compete against yourself, don't compete against other people. Don't look at somebody else, be like am I better than him? Compete against yourself, ask was I better than my? Was I better than I was yesterday? Don't ever compare yourself to somebody else, because that's a whole different person. They do different things, they train different ways. Nope, you compete against yourself Basically.
Shaun:You know it's one of those hey catches ball in a cup and see if you can break that record in an hour. Never compete against other people. And if you're always competing against yourself, you can always just push yourself that extra hard and you can identify which you know you need to train better, work harder at. So, in a way, yeah, being competitive can be kind of a learned trait. So I mean, don't compare yourself to Todd McFarland if you want to be an author, compare. Or an artist. Yeah, yeah, his writing was kind of. Yeah, I go on a rant about that, but whatever. But there you go. If you want to learn how to be competitive, don't be competitive with other people, be competitive with yourself. Somebody actually explained to me that's the fun thing about golf is because you're not really technically competing with other people. I mean you can, but you're more of just trying to break your own record, break your deal, do better up by yourself. I was like, huh, it kind of makes sense, I guess.
Shaun:I guess, yeah, so there you go to get yeah. So did you learn something about being competitive?
Nate:No.
Shaun:I feel you're just being ha, you're being difficult, see, and that way you will not evolve as a man and you'll be forever Is a non-competitive person. It is very inspiring. Yes, oh, now you're just lying to me. No, seriously, I mean, actually he's dead right. When I read that he's like oh, yeah, he's 100% accurate on that, you know? Don't, yeah, don't be like, hey, am I doing better than Elon Musk is today? Because you know that's comparing apples to oranges. You were born rich and stuff. Compare yourself like hey, am I a better person than I was yesterday? Can I run faster than I did yesterday? My better player person, father lover than yesterday? So, yep, compete against yourself. And that way too, when you finally do beat yourself, you like yell at yourself in a mirror like you suck, I beat your ass earlier. Yeah, I just completely just tear yourself down.
Shaun:And the next thing you're like yeah, they're punching the mirror and screaming at yourself How'd you break your hand, lost an argument myself, punch the wall myself as myself fight dirty Yep. So there's Jerry. There's Jerry Rice's secret to being competitive.