Carroll with the Life Drum Core (and a copy of GameChangers) after a USC football practice

GameChangers do not confine themselves to one scene or one role.  Nobody knows this better than Pete Carroll. He probably could have stayed at USC until he was ready to retire. In a showbiz town, he is a star, adored by fans, and lavished with perks and money. He has done a ton of good here, too, in the form of community work through his A Better Life LA foundation. Here’s what the L.A. Times had to say about him in 2008:

Few know that about twice a month Carroll leaves his comfy digs at USC, hops in the back of a beaten Camry driven by a former gang member and heads to South L.A. neighborhoods where the snap of gunfire and the anguish of death occur with the steady regularity of a metronome.

These are not recruiting visits. He’s trying to save lives.

Most often, he arrives near midnight and walks shadowy streets with that familiar, electric strut, surrounded by little boys, grandparents, crack heads and gang toughs. He empathizes, listens, encourages, laughs. He talks about jobs and kids and marriage, about perspective and courage, about how difficult it must be to be caught in the madness of the streets.

He realizes that some might think he’s a fool, that some might say he should pay no mind to gang members. Naysayers do not stop him.

“I don’t go to judge . . . just to show that someone cares,” he said. “Just go to give people here a little hope. . . . Get folks to step back and think. Hopefully, get them to change.”

Five years ago, moved by news of murders near USC’s campus, Carroll formed a foundation called A Better LA, dedicated to ending inner-city violence. He hoped to use the self-improvement thinking he’s long leaned on in coaching to help people in poor and dangerous neighborhoods.

We play many roles in life, but always through the essential truth of who we are.   Seattle will be getting a new coach, and who knows how he’ll play the role, or how he’ll do there?  Carroll failed with the New York Jets when he coached before in the pros.  What the Seahawks can count on is getting a man who will compete hard on the field and contribute to the community in which he lives.

When things get too comfortable, a GameChanger consciously changes the game.  I don’t know Carroll’s mind, but it seems to me that a coach whose motto is “Always Compete,” needed a new challenge to keep his competitive edge.  He probably didn’t enjoy coaching against his protege, Steve Sarkisian, at Washington, to whom USC lost this year in an upset.  With his children grown, maybe the time is right for Carroll and his wife to move on.  As the writer and radio star Garrison Keillor once told me before deciding to leave Minneapolis to live in New York City for a few years, “If you do something for someone, they expect you to keep on doing it.  But a person has a right to do something else for a change.”

The Pete Carroll story will be analyzed to death, but on the meta level it’s simple.  In order to compete at the top of his game, a competitor like Pete Carroll needs a challenge.

A GameChanger does not seek success, but growth.  Success is a plateau we’ve reached.  Growth is a mountain we must climb.