Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci
The Coach Everyone Called a Failure (He Proved Them Wrong) - Monte Burke
25 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What unconventional methods did Pete Carroll use in coaching?
Pete Carroll unconventional and ahead of his time using psychology using far eastern mysticism and all kinds of all these inputs and he kind of turned what used to be sort of a pejorative which was a player's coach he kind of turned that on his head a little bit I think he was way ahead of his time I think unfortunately he had the historical accident of being kind of around the same time as Nick Saban who's probably the best college football coach of all time Bill Belichick who's probably the best pro coach of all time
And here you have, where do you put Carroll? It's a little bit unfortunate that he came around at the same time. He won't get his due, but I think he's a very influential coach in the game of football. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Monty Burke. And what a book this is. And no, it's not about the Iliad.
The title of the book is Men of Troy, the Epic Afternoons, Wild Nights, and Enduring Legacy of Carroll, Pete Carroll's U.S. Trojans. And My God, you know, I was living this with you, Madhya, and I watched a lot of these games. And, of course, you never know the back story behind all of this stuff. But what a great book. This should be a movie.
I guess I want to find out if you're making a movie about this. And you've written about big personalities, of course, before, big systems. What drew you to Pete Carroll and USC in this decade, effectively? I just think, I mean, I love football in general, but I think this is one of the most, sort of a singular era in football.
You know, you had this downtrodden coach, weird coach doing things in a different way, who'd been fired twice in the NFL, taking over a program that once proud and hadn't been good in like two decades. You know, there's this great build and then all of a sudden they're winning two championships in a row and playing Texas in what's considered to be the greatest game of all time. 34 straight wins.
And then, of course, there's the scandal that kind of ends it all. So it had this sort of natural, nice little natural arc. And then, you know, what was cool about it is, you know, I always think of college football as being sort of a sport of the small to medium towns. You think of like Tuscaloosa and State College and stuff like that.
usc is different they were in los angeles and during this time period there was there were no nfl teams there as well so they really captured something in la and they had you know people like arnold and the fawns and will ferrell and snook dogs you know not just coming to games they were going to practice too they were sort of part of the team so it had this sort of feel that it never happened before i don't think it'll ever happen again uh you know all orchestrated by this oddball of a coach who did things completely differently uh than anyone really before him
Yeah, he's such an interesting guy, and we'll talk about some of the good and the bad here in a second, but I have a lot of respect for him. But before we get to him, I want to talk about the ethos of the NFL and the ethos of college football. Nick Saban goes to the Dolphins. He's in the NFL, doesn't do great. He becomes one of the most successful college players.
football coaches ever at Alabama. Pete Carroll's had success in both. By the way, he's gotten teams to the Super Bowl. He's gotten teams to the national championship. So what is the difference in the ethos, if you don't mind, before we delve into the book? And what do you think makes somebody successful in one and potentially not the other?
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Chapter 2: How did Pete Carroll's coaching style differ from Nick Saban's?
So, so, you know, Marty Carroll is a flake. He's a fraud.
Yeah.
He's a failure. I mean, this is what you're saying in the book. I mean, this is the dismissiveness of lots of people at USC, the alumni, the failings at the Jets. And how does he build belief in a room full of skeptics?
The biggest way is through winning, right? I mean, winning kind of cures all.
I mean, that is your best. I mean, I just want to let you know that, like, not that I'm your interview coach, but every goddamn time you have an interview, you got to say, this MF knows how to win, okay? I mean, because that's it. That's the Wall Street line. It's totally true. Because that's hard to do, Monty. So how does he do it? It is. It is. So, you know, he doesn't win right away.
Actually, they start off like one and five, two and five, something like that. And everyone is just kind of pulling out their hair. And, you know, he just he just starts to build this culture. It's a culture of fun. You know, it's a culture where he, you know, kind of cares about every individual player.
It's not like he's a militaristic guy like Belichick and Saban, like he's, you know, and he pulls pranks. So there's this kind of attitude of fun, but also really competitive. And he has these two players who were left over from the previous regime. who kind of really pick up the mantle. They were sick of losing, too. And those two players were Carson Palmer and Troy Polamalu.
And they really helped get the ball rolling. And when USC hired him, you know, what were they thinking? Shit, we don't have so much to lose. We're going to throw the Hail Mary with this guy, right? I mean, more or less, right? Yep. Yep. So USC, you know, is sort of desperate when they hire him. Almost as desperate as he is.
And actually, I feel like the marriage of two desperate entities can work out sometimes. I mean, Carroll had been fired twice. He'd been out of football for a year. USC hadn't been good for two decades. He's the third or fourth candidate, depending on who you ask. So he's not really like a desired man. And then he starts off terribly.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Pete Carroll face when he took over USC?
We're like, what is the NCAA doing, man? I mean, here's this kid who, He can't make any money off his name. And they're selling his number five jersey in the store. And he's making literally gobs of money for not just his school, but the television partners, all sorts of stuff like that. So I think this was actually pretty kind of a seminal moment in this scandal.
It was a seminal moment in college football. I'm totally with you. And this is what makes the book so fascinating because – You're dealing with a culture that's changing, right? We're going from this like Puritan culture of amateur football to the reality of our commercial contemporary culture. Right.
And unfortunately, he's caught in the web of this thing, and that's what makes it hypocritical. By the way, I thought you did a really good job of reporting it. objectively. And I did a little bit of research on you. I know you did 150 interviews for this. So when I hear that somebody did 150 interviews, I'm like, okay, Monty, was there a single conversation?
Was there something that you were like, wow, this stood out? Was there one conversation where you shut off the microphone and the recorder like, whoa, that was revealing. There were a lot actually, you know, somehow I convinced Carol about a couple of them. Then somehow, somehow I convinced Carol to sit down with me for seven long interviews, which was really, really interesting.
Cause he, you know, he's old enough now to be start thinking about legacy and, uh, but not too old, not to remember a lot of the stories. And, you know, he wasn't happy with a lot of the things that I, that are not a lot, but some of the things I put in there, he was, he was actually pretty angry about him, but yeah, So he was great. I thought Lane Kiffin was fascinating.
I mean, he's just an interesting person, right? I mean, he's just this kind of, I went down and interviewed him when he was still at Ole Miss and he had, he had, speak of dogs, he had a Labrador retriever that kept running in and out of his office while I was interviewing him. But you get a lot of the best stuff from not necessarily the big names. I've had this happen in a lot of books, actually.
It's like the punter or the backup tight end or someone like that can just give you just great stuff because they're observing it, right? And they're not worried so much about their image. So someone like Matt Leiner or someone might be. So you just get a lot of great stuff. But it was so fun. I mean, I really enjoyed doing... all of these interviews.
I can hear their voices when I read it on the paper. I can still hear people's voices when the, you know, it really imprints itself on your brain. I love doing interviews. Yeah, I mean, and it comes out in the book. I feel like I got to know these personalities, and I feel like I also got to...
You know, the problem is at that period of time in my life, I was so busy that yes, that I watched the USC Notre Dame game. Yes. That I watched these national football championships. Yes. But I didn't really, I wasn't totally fixated on that team. Right. And you brought it back to life for me and you brought it back to life for me in a way that was very human. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How did Carroll build a winning culture at USC?
But we love the players, too. You know, I mean, you as a Jets fan, you're probably a big Kenny O'Brien fan, you know. Kenny O'Brien, you know, Sanchez. I was there for the butt fumble, man. Yeah. Thanksgiving, man. You look good. Sanchez looked good those first two years. Watching the butt fumble. And, man, I had a lot of empathy for Woody that night. He was really frustrated. I bet.
I mean, the Patriots have just done a number on this team for, you know, forever.
Yeah.
I'm down to the five words. If you've ever watched our podcast, we pick five words out of your book. I want you to react to the words and give me a sentence or two. So if I say the word football to you, Monty Berg, what do you say? America's game. Right. Violent and balletic. It's this nice combination of what you would call the sublime.
Kierkegaard called the sublime beauty and terror, and that's football. Yeah, I love that. Okay. USC Trojans. Just a beautiful place to go to school. I mean, it's particularly right, not necessarily surrounding area, but the campus. And the Trojan part of it really interested me. I had a whole little section of the book where I looked into the Trojan War. And I sort of love that.
I love the guy on the horse with the sword and all that sort of stuff and the fuzzy thing on the top of his head. Listen, it's a beautiful campus. I've been there before. If I say NIL to you, what do you say? It's a very good thing that these kids can capitalize on their name, image, and likeness. It's very anti-American, anti-capitalist to not be able to do that. Right. Okay.
So NIL, for everybody listening in, we've got a lot of young viewers, is name, image, and likeness. This is now the opportunity for these young players to make money off of their success in their sport. And we both think it's a good thing, I would say, right? I mean, I agree with that. I think you have to do that for these young men. All right. I'm going to say, Nick. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
I was going to say, why could someone, a software developer at Zuckerberg, capitalize on what he did at Harvard, right? And a football player can't capitalize what he does on the football field. It completely makes sense to me. I'm glad we're there now as a culture and a society. Okay. Ready? Nick Saban. Nick Saban. Best college coach of all time.
uh a true believer that the in in sort of process thinking and and and someone like carol and like a lot of other very successful people i know they love the day-to-day the minute-to-minute part of their jobs they absolutely can't live without it and that's really what makes them successful i feel like i mean nick savin and p carol loved practice they loved designing
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