A brief history of Pete Carroll

A brief history of Pete Carroll

The history behind the man who is attempting to lead his team to two Super Bowls in a row.

The Super Bowl is often times referred to as the “Promised Land” in the world of the National Football League, reachable by only the worthiest, the best of the best. On Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks and head coach Pete Carroll will be going to the big game for their second time in a row, a feat only seven other teams in the history of the league have ever achieved. The pressure is tremendous, and the nation holds the defending champs to an incredibly high standard.

This will not be the first pressure-filled game the Seahawks’ organization has ever encountered, nor will it be the first that head coach Carroll has ever encountered. The Seahawks’ current coach is a veteran in every sense of the term. Currently the second oldest coach in the NFL at age 62, Carroll has been involved with football since high school.

Carroll’s career in football began with a less than impressive start. Weighing only about 110 pounds in high school, he was required to bring in a special clearance from a doctor clearance in order to even try out. However, by the time he was a senior Carroll was a multi-sport athlete, staring in basketball and baseball along with his favorite sport: football. Following graduation, he went on to play free safety at the University of Pacific where he earned his bachelors of science in business administration.

With dreams of a football career still implanted in his mind, he went on to try out for the Honolulu Hawaiians of the World Football League but did not make the cut due to his small frame. To make ends meet, he got a job in the Bay Area selling roofing materials, but found he was not the best at it and soon moved on. That would be his only non-football-related job. Carroll never could have imagined that his football career was just at its beginning.

After being an assistant for the University of Pacific, University of Arkansas, Iowa State, Ohio State and finally North Carolina State, Carroll went on to try his hand at the big leagues. He bounced from team to team as an assistant until landing a short-term head coaching job with the Patriots, only to be let go two seasons later. What probably seemed like a curse to Carroll at the time would end up being the opportunity of a life time.

One day Carroll’s phone rang, and on the other end of the line was the University of Southern California. The team had a head coaching vacancy, a spot Carroll happily filled from 2001-08. He would go 96-19, winning 83.5 percent of his games, and would produce three Heisman Trophy winners and two National Championships. For many coaches this would be as good as it gets, but not for Pete Carroll.

In 2010 he left USC to pursue what every successful college coach dreams of: a long term head coaching job in the NFL. Carroll has been the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks since leaving USC and has had monumental success with the team. Winning the Super Bowl at the end of the 2013 season, Carroll and his Seahawks prepare to defend that title against longtime friend Bill Belichick and his New England Patriots. Carroll is one of the best and will have his time to prove it this Sunday.

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