College game remains Carroll's personal wonderland

By Mark Kreidler
Special to ESPN.com

Updated: November 2, 2005, 8:02 PM ET

Well, that settles it: Pete Carroll is much too human to ever coach in the NFL again.

AP

Holding up title trophies? The nation's longest winning streak? What's not to like for Pete Carroll?

He's just not stiff enough for the pros, that's what it comes down to. Carroll actually likes to laugh. He still has trouble regarding a well-executed quarterback option as the apex of our evolution. He's got perspective. He plays pranks, for the love of Ditka. He had his own guys believing the other day that he was in a full-tilt Halloween altercation with one of his running backs, until the situation dissolved into a flurry of laughs and I-gotcha's.

And he could never have it better than he has it right now, coaching a college program in a glamour city, doing the grind but enjoying the perks. Pete Carroll, smack in the middle of USC's attempt to grab a share of a third straight national championship, appears from just about every available viewing angle to be having a decent time.

They don't forgive that in the Tagliabue Division, do they?

You'd love to believe that at some point people will be able to say something like, "He's a great college coach," without it being a backhanded compliment. In Carroll's case, his inability to win wildly in the NFL (6-10 in one season with the Jets, 27-21 and 1-2 in the playoffs in three seasons with the Patriots) makes that virtually impossible. In other words, he's a great college coach, but ...

In some corners, Carroll will always be regarded as a rah-rah type whose style just isn't suited for the pros, and that'll be marked down as a failure because, after all ... well, it's the NFL. He didn't make it as a head coach in Tha League, and that's the highest calling in football for a coach or player, isn't it?

So the theory goes, anyway. In practice, I'm not sure but that the two entities cancel each other out in terms of preferability. A college coach deals with the NCAA's Byzantine ways and the looming specter of monied boosters who have their own ideas about how to win a ball game. An NFL coach answers strictly to the owner and the GM, really, and he never has to make a pretense about coaching Boy Scouts -- but he is expected to be deadly serious most of the time, to treat losing like cancer, to accept getting run out of town every couple of years and, often as not, to report to an owner who is a good businessman but, alas, a sporting loon. (Insert favorite local-owner joke here.)

Pete Carroll just happens to be great at the whole college thing. He really is. He can schmooze with university presidents and pull a stunt with one of his own, like his classic staged fight with running back LenDale White the other day. He can pump fists on the sidelines and jump into the arms of victorious teammates. The man is probably incurably spontaneous.

The closest living version to a spontaneous human being in the NFL might be Dick Vermeil, and it's clear that the powers that be have sort of grandfathered in Vermeil in terms of his propensity for allowing true emotions to bubble to the surface. But don't forget: Vermeil is also the same guy whose first go-round as a head coach in the NFL, though successful (reached Super Bowl with Philadelphia) ended with Dick walking away from the game. He was one of the first coaches in the modern era to cite burnout as, you know, something to be avoided.

Who do you have in the NFL right now? Bill Belichick. Nick Saban. Jon Gruden. Andy Reid. Bill Parcells. Norv Turner. Fine football minds all, but not, let us agree, the guys most likely to break into song or tell a genuinely funny story -- or, for that matter, to say much of anything that might reveal the personalities within.

None of which makes Carroll or the college game inherently better. That's strictly preference. The NFL has the fan advantage that it will always have, which is that, if you want to watch the best players in the world, it's the only place to go. It isn't about hometowns and pom-poms nearly so much as it is about excellence, which, even in a parity/mediocrity era, is more or less always on display.

There's a certain grimness that is maybe necessary in the pros. It's business, man. Winning and losing and the gate and receipts aren't part of any larger athletic program; they are the program. It's win or die most of the time, and that is absolutely part of the allure.

The college game sure isn't immune to that, but when people start talking about why they follow a college team, you're going to hear sooner or later the part about the raw emotions -- guys who whoop, who cry, who exhort. It's just a little more human, is all. And that's Pete Carroll's situation, pretty clearly.

You hear a little talk, and there will be more of it, about the latest round of NFL suitors for Carroll -- and it isn't as if no successful college coach has ever gone on to enjoy a good life in the pros. But here's hoping Carroll continues to embrace the fact that he can coach a high-profile, high-stakes football program and still have fun -- at least a little bit, at least once in a while. Surely that's worth enduring a few more decades of backhanded compliments.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. Reach him at mkreidler@sacbee.com.