They still don't take him seriously

The biggest reason Pete Carroll does not get the credit he's due -- even after what just happened over the past 12 months -- is that he doesn't behave like people think a football coach should.

The football coach occupies a unique corner in American culture, right there at the intersection of Toughness and Accountability. He’s the one who oversees two-a-days in the late-August heat, toughening up teenagers so the games will feel easy. He’s the one who convinces a group of men that if they do a series of assigned tasked in a prescribed order that it will result in success and glory for all. And at some level, the football coach is the one who is capable of unleashing some serious Old Testament anger if that’s what it takes to get through the thick skulls of one of the brutes he’s in charge of.

I’m convinced that most football fans believe that last sentence to be true at some level. That anger and fear are not just tools that can be used, but ones must be employed for a coach to maximize his team’s potential. Pete Carroll does not believe this. In fact, I would say his refusal to employ fear as a coaching tactic is a foundational piece of his coaching philosophy and I believe this — more than anything else — explains why he does not receive the credit he should within the industry that he works in even as he continues to defy this belief that his approach is somehow not sustainable.