by Pete Carroll
One night during a spring semester, a few of us were invited to have dinner with Tim in San Francisco. We spent a long night talking about the power of our minds and how that factors into performance. I left dinner counting the days until I could try his approach with our UOP players. This was my early introduction to the principles of the Inner Game.
One of the great things about working and studying in northern California during that time was the accessibility to innovative thinking that made me look at the world in a new way. On the field, we executed hard-nosed old-school football, as represented by the program Coach Caddas built at Pacific. We were about discipline, tradition, and toughness—and it worked some of the time. In the classroom, we were working just as hard but looking at athletic performance through a different lens.
One of my first experiments challenging traditional thinking was not so well received by the head coach. We weren’t a very good team and we struggled. On a whim, at one of our nightly position meetings, I decided to ask the defensive backs what they thought they needed to get better. And so I went around the room and asked each player the same question. Listening to their suggestions, I took notes and decided to restructure the next day’s practice. It was the first time we had really connected as a group, and it was a powerful meeting that left us looking forward to practicing the next day and the prospect of getting better.
When the meeting was over, I headed back to the coaching offices, proud of our meeting. The first person I ran into was Coach Caddas. Still charged up, I said, “Coach, you won’t believe what a great meeting we just had!” I started to tell him about it, and as I got to the part about asking the players what they thought they needed, he cut me off. Just when I was expecting praise, he looked me straight in the eye and said in his southern drawl, “Don’t you ever ask the players what they need. Don’t you ever tell the players that you’ll plan practice the way they want it, not as long as you’re here on this staff coaching the game of football.”
Of course I was crushed—I thought I had such a great moment, and here was my head coach, the man I played for in college, telling me I had made the biggest mistake ever. Still, the next day I found a way to structure practice to meet the needs of my players, and I think we got better after that.
Coach Caddas is a great guy and an excellent coach. It’s just that listening to the ideas of the players was not the kind of thing that was done in old-school football. In many cases it’s still not done today. But on a basic level, even then, I understood that whether or not that was the “way it was done,” I had made a special connection with the players. I had discovered the power of communicating with and listening to those you hope to help. If I was going to do something special and help players find their potential, I was going to have to build relationships and follow my instincts. No matter the result or reprimand, I wanted to hang on to who I was and what I stood for, and follow my heart.
Another person who had an incredible impact on my way of thinking was Michael Murphy, cofounder of the Esalen Institute. He also was a guest lecturer in Professor Albaugh’s sports psychology class. He combined ideas from Western psychology and Eastern philosophy in new and exciting ways that I believe still resonate today.
Michael was one of the first researchers to explore the transformational potential of sport, not only in terms of performance but also in terms of how those experiences can drive you to be the best human being you can be. He spoke to our class about the power of an athlete’s mind and how he or she could train it to perform in what he called “the zone.” He shared story after story that stretched my perceptions about the levels of performance we could achieve through sport.
For the first time in my life, I was truly inspired to study and learn, as the academic subjects were finally set in the context of athletics and performance, things about which I was truly passionate. All of a sudden, I felt like a sponge trying to soak up as much as possible. But by far, the best part was how much it all seemed to apply directly to my job as a coach. Everything that got me excited in the classroom was taken back to the field, meeting room, and locker room. Armed with a newfound sense of confidence and a deeper understanding of the world around me, I began to apply this new knowledge to the way I coached at Pacific.
One small but telling example of how bringing the lessons from the classroom worked occurred during my second season coaching at UOP. Hoping to inject a little energy into my position group, I decided to throw out the wildly unrealistic goal that we could lead the nation in interceptions that year. If ever there was going to be a test of whether mind over matter actually worked, it seemed like this would be it.
On a purely practical level, there was no reason for anyone in their right mind to think that this bunch of guys could accomplish such a lofty goal under the circumstances. We were an ordinary football program, having finished the previous season 5-6-1. We were young and very average athletically, but at the time it didn’t seem to matter. We decided to take our shot and see if we could make it happen. There wasn’t any reason to believe we would be successful, but there wasn’t any reason not to take a shot at something special anyway.
It wasn’t something we blew out of proportion—in fact, many of the guys who played for us that season might not even remember it. But for me that goal was always there in the background, not as a boast but as an affirmation: a true statement about what we thought the future could hold for us if we really, truly did our best. Nobody knew and few really cared, but the UOP Tigers had twenty-five interceptions that season, finishing as one of the nation’s leaders in interceptions. Who knows exactly why we pulled that off . Looking back, I wonder what would have happened had we not set our sights so high. It was an accomplishment worth being proud of, and it gave me confidence that maybe I was onto something. Maybe Maslow, Gallwey, Murphy, and friends really did know what they were talking about.
That defensive success at UOP may not have translated to a championship season, but it absolutely laid the groundwork for my young coaching career. Based on my studies and experiences, I knew that the first step to doing great things was affirming the belief that great things are possible. This is something I came to understand, but it would not be until years later that I would hear someone articulate this principle in the language in which I think about it today. That person would be Lou Tice, founder of the Pacific Institute, based in Seattle.
Lou has been one of my great friends and mentors over the years. As an educator, thinker, and life coach, he has pioneered ways to help individuals and organizations, from major corporations to the United States military, work together more effectively. Many years after that season at UOP, watching Lou help others to function at higher and higher levels helped me put into words what I’d known instinctively back then: that the simple act of making thoughtful, affirmative statements about who we are and what we want to achieve can be an incredibly powerful tool for getting the best possible performance out of ourselves.
All in all, it was an exciting time for me. Some attempts to incorporate new ideas into my coaching, such as the goal of leading the nation in interceptions, were successful. Others didn’t go over so well, at least not with Coach Caddas. I was young, and Coach was probably right to see my thinking as a little too progressive for his program, so I followed and respected his lead. All the same, the ideas that came out of my studies stayed with me, and I looked forward to the day when I could try them out in a new environment.
Around this time Bob Cope, an assistant coach at Pacific, accepted a position on Lou Holtz’s staff at the University of Arkansas and convinced Coach Holtz to bring me on as a graduate assistant. For me, this was a jump into big-time college football that would have a profound impact on my coaching career.
The next six years were a whirlwind tour through the world of college football. A series of great jobs and opportunities took Glena, our young family, and me all over the country. From Arkansas to Iowa State to Ohio State to North Carolina State and back to Pacific, i
t was a process of gaining invaluable experiences and developing a network in coaching that reached well beyond my years.
Head coaches Lou Holtz, Earle Bruce, and Monte Kiffin, along with a number of assistant coaches who would eventually go on to have exceptional coaching careers, would each play their own part in influencing my young coaching career. They all had strong personalities and were great thinkers. In these guys I saw different philosophies and approaches on how to coach and lead a team. Each of them had their own unique style, and they all had a special effect on their programs.
During those years, and even later when I had the opportunity to coach for various NFL teams, I was fortunate to work with coaches whose brilliance, insight, or personal style translated into a level of performance that seemed more like magic.
One of the coaches I’m most proud to say I worked under was Bud Grant with the Minnesota Vikings. Coach Grant is the third-winningest professional football coach in history, with a combined 290 victories in the National and Canadian Football Leagues, in addition to having successful playing careers in the NFL, CFL, and NBA. His record is beyond legendary, but having seen him work up close, I can say that it was his intuitive powers that truly amazed me and I remain in awe of those abilities to this day. He saw what was happening in front of him so much more clearly than anyone else. Like other great sports figures, such as Muhammad Ali and Joe Namath, it seemed that just by making a prediction Coach Grant could make it come to life.
I recall one such story when we were playing our season opener against the San Francisco 49ers. They had just won the Super Bowl the previous year and were obviously an intimidating opponent for us. The night before the game, Coach Grant gathered us all together and gave a short, simple speech. In essence, he told us that the Niners were used to winning easy. Their strength, he told us, would be their weakness. They had so much offense and had been so productive when it came to scoring that they were simply not accustomed to being in a close game.
“If we can keep the game close,” Coach Grant told us, “we’ll beat these guys in the fourth quarter. They’ll tighten up, they’ll have problems, and they won’t know what to do with the situation.”
Sure enough, the fourth quarter came around and we had managed to keep the game close, being down only 28-21. We had just scored but needed another possession to at least tie the game, but time was running out. The stadium was roaring, and I was listening on the headset when Coach Grant called the kickoff team together. “Kick it to number twenty-six,” he told them confidently. “Kick it to twenty-six, he’ll fumble it.”
Sounds impossible, right? How could anyone know such a thing? But sure enough, our kicker sent the ball to number twenty-six, he fumbled the ball when he got hit by one of our players, and we recovered it at the fifty-yard line. It was unbelievable. Everyone went berserk except Bud, who just stood there with a satisfied smile on his face, as calm as ever. Coach Grant just had that way about him. I was beginning to see how the true power of positive attitudes and clear intentions could affect outcomes.
Of all the great coaches I have worked with, none would have a more fundamental impact on the tactical side of my coaching than Monte Kiffin.
Besides being the preeminent defensive expert in modern-day football, he has been a generous friend. Monte has provided me with what seems like a lifetime of advice, opportunity, and mentoring, and certainly plenty of laughs both inside and outside the game of football. We’ve been sharing information and having conversations since we were first introduced to each other at the University of Arkansas in 1977, where he served as the defensive coordinator. Certainly, the hallmarks of Monte’s aggressive, attacking style defense can be found in the defenses I have coordinated over the years. His trademark “Tampa 2” defense is legendary in football circles and has definitely been a factor in many of our wins.
Monte is a tactical genius who has been a great influence on my defensive game over the years. His greatest contribution to my career, however, came early on—long before I ever entered the NFL—when he impressed upon me a simple but powerful belief: In order to be successful, you must have a consistent philosophy. If you change who you are from year to year, he explained, you’re never going to be great at anything. I remember vividly when Monte pulled out a sheet of paper, which had no more than five or six sentences on it, and shared his philosophy. The essence of his philosophy was crystal clear: For him, it came down to playing with great effort and great discipline. Everything else flowed from that.
At the time, I was amazed at how clearly and succinctly he was able to express his philosophy. This was something I had never really seen another coach do. It was an inspiring and humbling moment in my development as a coach. For the first time, I saw the importance of being able to organize your thoughts and feelings about your work. At some point, I realized, I was going to have to stop just collecting pieces and develop a philosophy of my own.
It never dawned on me to take the time to reflect and evaluate what each learning experience meant—not just as an idea, but in terms of my entire journey, past, present, and future. From Redwood High School to the cusp of the NFL, I had been making great strides, but I now realize that in a sense I had also been doing exactly the opposite of what Monte was suggesting.
I had been operating with a multitude of ideas without a comprehensive philosophy to bring them all together. It would still be a long time before that afternoon at home when I finally pulled out a pen and paper and started writing. The realization that I would need to have a philosophy in order to really maximize my potential was one of the breakthrough moments in my personal education and professional career.
3
THE INNER GAME OF FOOTBALL
In my early years as a coach I was influenced by Abraham Maslow, Tim Gallwey, and Michael Murphy. Each had a profound impact on my learning and eventual teaching. Yet as the years passed, Gallwey’s “Inner Game” concept proved to be the most influential. The essence of the Inner Game is to acquire and maintain a “quieted mind,” which may then allow an athlete to perform at his or her highest level. Most of my coaching has revolved around enabling players and teams to achieve this state of mind.
The only competition that matters is the one that takes place within yourself. It isn’t about external factors. Tim Gallwey and his Inner Game approach to performance has had a huge impact on how I look at the challenges of coaching. Specifically, Gallwey wrote about how human beings tend to enter a state of doubt when faced with the unknown or uncertainty. When that occurs, he wrote, we instinctively “overtighten.” Physically, when we doubt our ability, we will tend to overtighten our muscles. Mentally, we fear failure and can become emotional and distracted.
This seemed so obvious when I read it, but until Gallwey, nobody had pointed it out. Examples I immediately thought of were about a basketball player failing to follow through when shooting a timely three-pointer, or a wide receiver short-arming a pass across the middle when he senses a safety bearing down on him. Gallwey’s illustration of overtightening was a golfer who doubts his ability on a short putt; he tenses up as he makes contact with the golf ball, and misses a shot he could have made if only he had been playing loose.
Gallwey says that the concept of overtightening is nearly a “universal principle,” and it certainly happens in football. Like any other sport, football presents physical and mental challenges. It is our job as coaches to prepare players in every regard possible. When players know that they have mastered the rigors of training, whether on the football field or in the weight room or classroom, then their confidence leads to an unusual focus, free from distractions, doubt, or fear. This attentiveness, also known as a quieted mind, clears the way for athletes to perform to their highest potential.
Think of young children playing. They don’t worry about being judged, and they are only concerned with having fun. In those moments, it’s easy to observe true, uninhibited play. We witness a level of concentration where the children are totally immerse
d, unaware of the world around them. This fascination and ability to be supremely focused are essential for their development, much like an athlete.
An athlete’s immersion in and focus on performance allows for a lost sense of time in much the same way. When we have confidence and allow ourselves to become fascinated, the world seems to move in slow motion. It is an altered state of consciousness that comes from an extreme level of focus. Some performers describe this as resembling an out-of-body experience.
One of the first times such a moment happened to me was in the batter’s box at a northern California high school baseball field in the spring of 1968. We were having a disastrous game against the league leader, and I was at bat in the final inning. As I stepped up to the plate, an odd thought came into my mind: Whatever you do right now, there’s no way you’re going to change the outcome of this game. A pessimistic thought, sure, but instead of depressing me, it was liberating.
As I settled into the batter’s box and prepared for the first pitch, everything seemed normal—until the pitcher, a gifted athlete who was known as “Big Mike,” began his windup. I remember it like it was yesterday. He’d been pitching a spectacular game, and as he shifted his weight, brought up his arms, and lifted his left leg off the mound, his form was picture perfect, just as it had been all night, with one important difference: Mike seemed to be moving in slow motion. His hand released one of the most perfect-looking sliders I had ever seen, and everything seemed like it was taking forever. As the baseball hurtled toward me, it appeared to be rotating so slowly that I swear I could have counted the stitches. Even before I started my swing, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to clobber it, and sure enough, the ball came off the bat with a sweetness that was nothing short of dreamlike. The ball flew straight over the pitcher’s head, then the center fielder’s head for an inside-the-park home run.
