Did you love middle school? Do you miss the bullying, the offensive humor, the infantile aggression? Then NFL player is the job for you!
I’ve never been happier to have been born with the physique of an undersized punter than in the past few weeks, as news reports have revealed the horrors of working in the NFL. Sure, my max bench press is 135 lbs., but let’s look at the positives: Unlike Miami Dolphin Jonathan Martin, I don’t get voice mails like this from my co-workers: “Wassup, you half-n—– piece of [expletive] . . . [I want to] [expletive] in your [expletive] mouth.”
Martin has understandably left the Dolphins. His tormentor, the improbably named Richie Incognito, has been suspended. And Dolphins veterans have lined up to support Incognito! Ummm . . . you guys have fun with that.
If I could play NFL football, I’d play only for the Seahawks. I say this not out of fanatical loyalty, but because Pete Carroll has made Seattle the NFL’s best place to work.
“I love it here,” first-year Hawk Michael Bennett told NFL.com last month. “I can’t even explain to people how it is here. They wouldn’t believe me.”
Bennett was comparing playing for Carroll to playing for Tampa Bay’s Greg Schiano, a classic rule-by-fear head coach. Square-jawed Schiano is prone to childish outbursts . . . and to losing. The Bucs started the season 0-8.
Screaming at your employees is a management technique that has largely disappeared from the American workplace—unless you work in the NFL. Or in South Lake Union.
After reading John Cook’s fantastic history of Amazon, The Everything Store, it dawned on me that Seattle may be the only town where the top businessperson yells more than the top football coach. I can’t stop telling people this story from the book: Amazon PR staffers botch the setup of a major presentation, and Jeff Bezos tells them “I can’t tell if you guys don’t have high standards, or if you just don’t know what you’re doing.” Ouch!
Pete Carroll would probably say something like “Let’s figure out a way to fix this thing together!” He believes in relentless positivity, and has converted coaches to his style—even a legendary hard-ass like offensive-line coach Tom Cable.
“I always coached how my coaches coached me,” Cable told ESPN.com—i.e., by screaming. Now Cable’s changed. “If I go ballistic on a guy . . . who is wrong? I am. I’m attacking his self-confidence.”
At Carroll’s previous employer, USC, a little love has transformed the Trojans from dismal to dangerous. Control freak and sourpuss Lane Kiffin is gone, replaced by assistant Ed Orgeron. Among Orgeron’s first moves? Allowing players to eat cookies after practice. Orgeron’s also said he’ll not be screaming at players, as he did in a former stint as head coach. Instead, he told The New York Times
: “I’m going to treat these players like they were my sons.”
If I may make a minor digression: It remains a mystery to me why coaches of school sports teams are permitted to scream at students. Regular teachers can’t yell at their students, though I’d imagine they’d often like to. Is teaching football so much harder than teaching math?
Carroll may not yell, but he doesn’t treat his players like sons either, unless we’re talking about Cain and Abel. Coach Carroll and CEO Bezos do have this in common—they encourage cutthroat competition within their organization.
According to The Everything Store, here’s what Bezos told the man he took from Amazon’s highly profitable books division to oversee the development of the Kindle: “Your job is to kill your business. I want you to proceed as if your goal is to put everyone selling physical books out of a job.” Fun times at the holiday party!
Carroll judges players on competition alone. And one player he deemed expendable has quit football rather than play for another team. John Moffitt, the Hawks’ third-round pick in 2011 retired earlier this month, ten weeks after the Seahawks traded him to Denver. Moffitt says he’d have kept playing if he were still with the Hawks. Looks like I’m not the only one with a Seahawks-only policy. I’m ready when you need me, coach!
sportsball@seattleweekly.com
