Pete Carroll Quotes

The Focus Is Always Us
"It's about us getting ready to play. It's not about the other team. We'll beat ourselves before they beat us. That's always our approach."

Rankings Philosophy
"Wherever we were ranked before, we didn't talk about it. We're not going to talk about it now," Carroll said. "It doesn't mean anything until we do something, and it takes a long time to do something in college football. "I sincerely don't think it matters — unless you let it matter."

Every Game Is A Championship Game
“We’re not going to do anything different for this game since we’re not treating this game any different than another game. Every game is a championship game for us, so we’ll treat this one, the last one and the next one exactly the same. And that goes for our practices leading up to it as well.”

After A Big Loss

I’ll search long and deep but you’ve got to do the same,” Carroll told the team. “We’ll suck it up and move on. We’ll get this done but we’ve got to hang tough and stay in this together.” Today, they just beat us,” Coach Pete Carroll said in a sullen locker room after the game. “It’s reality, and it hurts. “It shows you how hard this is.”

“I don’t know what happened tonight but I do know what has to happen from here,” Carroll told his players in the locker room. “We have to go back to work and get this started again. This game doesn’t mean a thing now, because we can’t do anything about it. But we can bounce back. “Have we lost a game before? Yeah, of course we have. But do we come back and win? Yeah, and we’ve won a lot.”

We can't do anything about what just happened," Coach Carroll said in the sullen visitors' locker room after Saturday's game. "We must respond." The past in the past and the future ahead, the bounce is what counts, as Carroll has said many times before. "The challenge is coming back," Carroll told his players. "We've got to stay together, be one and have a championship response."


The football lessons are obvious," Coach Carroll said. "If you turn the ball over like that and make all those penalties, it makes it really hard to win. You have to overcome when stuff like that happens, but we just couldn't today." "We just weren't a good enough football team to win today," Carroll said. "We're so much better than that, but we played like an ordinary football team. So we have to go back to our football and get better." The ever-positive Carroll continued to turn his players' attention forward to what they can affect instead of back to what they can't -- "stay with us, no pointing fingers, we need everybody," he challenged. "The important part now is: What're you going to do about it now?" Carroll said. "Where will your mind go? Where will your heart go? Will it go to the pits or will it go to what has to happen next?"


We know we can win championships after things like this," Carroll told his players, with no doubt in his voice. "We've been here before and we're going to climb back."


We played below our standards of play. We have to go back to work and regroup, believing in who we are and recreate that process so we can perform like we're capable," Carroll said. "We underachieved here today. We underperformed today. It has nothing to do with this game. This game is dead and gone already. It's what we're going to do about it."

The Next Game

“Let’s stay with the process; we need to be in it today,” Coach Carroll told the players. “Cash in today so you can get the most out of our preparation, both mentally and physically.”
“This night is so important because it doesn’t matter what happened last week,” Carroll told the team. “What are we going to do now? That’s what matters.
“We can only be a great football team one day at a time. We now have one chance — and that’s tomorrow.”

The Challenge Of Excellence

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
It’s a line that perfectly captures Carroll’s philosophy for the Trojans. The program is built around being great in every moment, because all the little moments eventually add up to the big events down the line, whether on Saturdays or otherwise.
And the Trojans have an ideal chance to seize one of those little moments in practice today.
“As we finish this week up, let’s get our habits right,” Carroll told the players.
That's the thing. We can't learn from our mistakes in something like this. We can't afford to make a mistake. That's why it's so tough to do.”

Maximizing Our Focus

"We have proven the value about focusing on the very thing that's right in front of you and maximizing every drop of the opportunity to have a great time today," Carroll said at his news conference Tuesday. "If we do that, we are a little closer to where we like to be. Our ability and our mastery of focusing in that manner is what our challenge is all about. … The truth is there is some voting college out there and when they tell us what to do, we will go out and do it. If I had control over that, I would talk about it … but I don't. What we do have control over is this day we are dealing with and our upcoming opportunity this weekend."

Spring Training
 “Every spring we set out to find out if we can reclaim and rediscover the work ethic and competitiveness we’ve had over the years. To me, that’s the No. 1 objective, knowing if you practice really hard with great effort and energy, we can accomplish the stuff we are trying to get done. From the first day on, it’s been a great spring. Guys have really answered the call. We’ve had great work, great speed with the kind of juice that we like. That’s been done.


Every Spring we must RECAPTURE the attitude, mentality and intensity (tempo) of the program.  We have 15 days, the same amount of time before a bowl game, to build the foundation that will support this year’s team.  We have 15 opportunities to move the program forward.  Sometimes the older guys bring the challenge and sometime it’s the youngers.  Everyone taps in everyday before practice.  We have so much to get better at.  The focus is totally on us. The depth chart is being drawn up. We will see who we can go to battle with and who we cannot.  Practice is where we make our team.  This is our chance to insure success in the fall.  Everyone will be pumped up. 

Competitor
What would be one word or a phrase that would describe you best?
Competitor. I compete at everything. That is the theme we base our program on. We talk about a relentless pursuit for a competitive edge in everything we do.




Motto
Do you have a motto of saying that you lead your life by?
It’s a couple of things. The first one is, you don’t want to be the best one doing it, you want to be the only one doing it. That’s a quote I have always liked; Jerry Garcia said that. There is another one that Nick Barrio, the basketball player, he had a philosophy, he said that I am a lifetime 48 percent shooter. If I miss my first 10 shots, look out. I like that a lot. It’s about knowing who you are.

The Power Of Today
Today is the most important day for us,” Coach Carroll told the players during this afternoon’s team meeting. “If you want to be great on Saturday, you’ve got to prepare well today.”

Winning Is Finishing
“We place a big emphasis on finishing,” Carroll offered as a hypothesis for the perfect November record. “We’re hitting the home stretch now, and it’s all about that ‘finish’ mindset. You've got to finish right if you want to be champions.”

Themes Of The Week
Tell The truth Monday
Competition Tuesday
Turnover Wednesday
No Repeat Thursday
Walk Through Friday

Before The Game

“From this moment until next Saturday night, you have to prepare to beat Ohio State every day,” “Stay hungry, remain humble and get better today.”
The phrase “Ohio State” was uttered a total of zero times during this afternoon’s team meeting, as Carroll continues to emphasize — like always — that the only thing that matters to the Trojans right now and this Saturday is themselves.  

After The Game
“This is exactly what we came here to do,” a smiling Coach Carroll yelled in the locker room following the win. “It doesn’t matter who we play, what the weather is or where we play — you better look out for the Trojans!” 

In The Moment
Living in the moment — that’s the bumper sticker motto that will stick in the Trojans’ minds today. The emphasis throughout this afternoon’s meetings was on the present moment, as coaches and players continued to focus on the opportunities presently in front of them and not on the one three days down the road. ”Let’s make sure we’re focused right now,” Coach Carroll said during the team meeting. “These are great opportunities today.” “Prepare to be great today,” he said. It’s simple, really: Be great right now so that you can be great later on.
 
Bouncing Back To The Top
Coach Carroll cites the Trojans heartbreaking last second loss to the University of Texas in the 2005 BCS National Championship game as an example. The game cost the Trojans a chance at securing a remarkable, third straight National Title. “When you know who you are and things don’t go right, it’s really easy to be resilient by going back to the truth,” Carroll says. “We had the game won all the way up until the last 19 seconds and 4th and 7, that play goes the wrong way. That doesn’t define who we are, were champions, we’ve been champions forever around here and we know what that’s like. You can reset and get going again and you can deal with upsets and hurdles and obstacles and things like that better, if you know what the truth is, by returning to the truth.”

Trophies???
"I love trophies, but f--- 'em. They're for old men, for guys living in memory," he says. "I'm talking about: Are we competing today, every minute, in everything we do in practice. Are we letting loose and daring to be great here and now? And can we sustain that? And repeat it. Trophies are great, but we're trying to win forever."

It's All About The Ball, The Team, The Competition 
"Our philosophy of football is: it's all about the ball," Carroll bellowed to open the meeting, emphatically breaking the silence with the program's No. 1 emphasis. "No matter what it takes on offense, you're going to protect this ball. And on defense, there's no play where we're not trying to get the ball away." Style: "Our style is that we play with have effort, great enthusiasm and we play smart." Three rules: "Protect the team; No whining, no complaining, no excuses; Be early." Practice is everything: "Practice is where we make us."  Everything counts: "You're either competing or you're not."