Pete Carroll knows a few things about winning in football. Carroll, the head coach and executive vice president of the Seattle Seahawks, led the University of Southern California to two straight AP National Championships and five BCS bowl victories. In January, his Seahawks shocked the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints in the opening round of the NFL playoffs. Carroll took a break from coaching to visit TCU and share his knowledge and coaching philosophy to college and high school coaches in a free, four-hour workshop Friday.
Carroll’s trip to TCU was a part of a four-stop tour of Win Forever, an organization partnering with Nike and AEG, a sports and entertainment company, according to AEG’s website. Win Forever is the lead-off event for the Nike tour, which includes Nike Football Training Camps, Nike SPARQ combines and the Elite 11 quarterback camps.
TCU will host this camp for the third or fourth year in row, TCU head football coach Gary Patterson said.
“I think [Nike and Win Forever coming to TCU] says a lot about what we have been able to accomplish on a national level but also the facilities we have here and the kind of people we have here,” Patterson said.
Win Forever co-founder Yogi Roth said Win Forever is a process designed to create “new generation of coaching for the next generation of athlete” through interactive workshops.
Carroll said TCU’s consistent success spawns from Patterson’s coaching ability and style.
“He is an example of exactly what we’re preaching about tonight,” Carroll said. “About finding out who you are and what you’re all about and then figuring a way to make that come to life for your coaches and your players.”
Carroll complimented Patterson and said he already has his philosophy in tact. He said this year’s theme, “Do it now,” was a great vehicle for that philosophy.
Carroll also said Patterson has done this through several facets of football, including recruitment, tactical approaches and philosophy.
“He gets it from A to Z, how to deliver the message of a philosophy and something that is absolutely representative of who he is,” Carroll said. “In doing so, he’s been consistently…at the top of his game and has brought TCU to a point where they are absolutely one of the top [teams] of the college football world.
“…[Win Forever is] more than just X’s and O’s. Winning forever is really about being the best you can possibly be and learning how to work in that direction,” Carroll said. “See, winning forever isn‘t about winning games, necessarily. It‘s about finding a way to bring out the best in our coaches [and] to bring out the best in our players…The winning comes along with that.”
For Carroll, winning boils down to competition and effort, he said.
“Competition for us has never been about beating somebody and rubbing their nose in the dirt,” Carroll said. “It’s about striving to be the best you can be.”
Carroll also said the competitive mentality that defined him also breeds a sense of respect. A team’s opponent challenges it to be better, Carroll said.
The workshops, however, were not about convincing the coaches to adopt Win Forever or Carroll’s competition-centered philosophies. Instead, Carroll said he, Roth and the rest of the Win Forever team designed the program to get coaches to be able to communicate a clear message and philosophy with their staff and players.
“They don’t have to take our philosophy at all,” Carroll said. “We want to see if we can inspire some guys to find their own truth [and] their own mentality through, really, a process of self discovery.”