But it’s important to get to exactly what we mean. Let’s take an excellent Pete Carroll profile that I reread a few days ago (for obvious reasons).

On page 4:

People who know him best invariably seize upon fun to describe Carroll, either saying it’s fun to be around him or that he’s forever having fun. His emphasis on fun comes mainly from his DNA but also from his reading, specifically W. Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis, a 122-page book with a cult-like following. (The latest edition features a foreword by Carroll.) Using tennis as a prism through which to view all human endeavor, Gallwey says we focus too narrowly on results. “The three cornerstones of Inner Game,” he tells me, “are Performance, Learning, and Enjoyment . Usually people put Performance first, and Learning and Enjoyment are almost absent.”

If we focused more on Enjoyment and Learning, Gallwey says, we’d perform better and we’d be a lot happier: “You look at a child. He learns while he plays. Anything he tries to do, or win at, he’s playing, he has a wonderful time doing it. They’re not separate things for a child. That means to me these things are inherently built into human beings. Most human beings, you have to coach what’s already inherent—that is, the drive of excitement to learn and keep learning, and the drive to enjoy. It gets really covered up when winning is everything. I agree with Lombardi: Winning is everything. It’s just what your definition of winning is.”

via Various Provocations: Performance, Amateurism and Professionalism.

I had precious little time with Carroll. I wanted to ask him about one of his favorite books, “The Inner Game of Tennis” by W. Timothy Gallwey, and why it meant so much to him.

I wanted to ask him about people who have been influential in his life such as psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl Jung, and Buddhist meditation master Chogyam Trungpa and Zen master D.T. Suzuki. In Coach Pete, we might have a Phil Jackson on our hands.

I wanted to ask him about about being a Grateful Dead head and why Bruce Springsteen’s “Growin’ Up” made such an impact on him in the summer of 1999.

And of course, I wanted to ask about his three kids and one grandkid, his friendship with Will Ferrell and support of President Obama.

But I went with the old standby instead and asked him to tell me about his dogs. The golden was special because she was a family dog who was with the kids while they were growing up.

His wife found the border-collie mix on the Internet and she arrived at Carroll’s home with a broken leg.

“She’s got a wacked personality,” Carroll said. “She runs our life.”

On offense, Carroll is known for using an aggressive, nonconservative play-calling that is open to trick plays as well as “going for it” on 4th down instead of punting the ball away.[57] <#cite_note-ESPN080907-56>  Because of his aggressive style, the USC Band has given him the nickname “Big Balls Pete.” At football games, when Pete Carroll decides to go for it on 4th down, the USC band will start a chant of “Big Balls Pete” that carries over to the students section and the alumni.[58] <#cite_note-LAT082607a-57>[59] <#cite_note-LAT102207-58> [5] <#cite_note-Esq09-4>
On defense, Carroll favors a bend-but-don’t-break scheme of preventing the big plays: allowing opposing teams to get small yardage but trying to keep the plays in front of his defenders.[60] <#cite_note-LAT092207-59>
Carroll draws coaching inspiration from the 1974 book The Inner Game of Tennis, by tennis coach W. Timothy Gallwey </wiki/W._Timothy_Gallwey> , which he picked up as graduate student at the University of the Pacific; he summarizes the philosophy he took from the book as “all about clearing the clutter in the interactions between your conscious and subconscious mind” enabled “Through superior practice and a clear approach. Focus, clarity and belief in yourself are what allows you to express your ability without discursive thoughts and concerns.”[61] <#cite_note-LAT082607-60>  He wrote a foreword </wiki/Foreword> for a later edition, noting that athletes “must clear their minds of all confusion and earn the ability to let themselves play freely.”[22] <#cite_note-NYT110208-21>  He also cites influences frompsychologists </wiki/Psychologist>  Abraham Maslow </wiki/Abraham_Maslow>  andCarl Jung </wiki/Carl_Jung> , Buddhist </wiki/Buddhism>  meditation</wiki/Meditation>  master Chögyam Trungpa </wiki/Ch%C3%B6gyam_Trungpa>  andZen </wiki/Zen>  master D. T. Suzuki </wiki/D._T._Suzuki> .[5] <#cite_note-Esq09-4>