It’s widely known that new Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll brings an enthusiastic, upbeat style not just to football, but pretty much everything he does. So when the team hired John Schneider away from a position with the Green Bay Packers to be Seattle’s new general manager (working extremely closely with Carroll), and Schneider displayed an excitable, Carroll-friendly personality, it only made sense that the coach’s notorious energy level would kick into an even higher gear. Based on Schneider’s introductory press conference, that happened and a little something more – causing Seattle-based reporters to take notice in strikingly similar ways.

Let’s start with Jerry Brewer of the Seattle Times, whose article on the subject is titled, “Fantastic collaboration? No, the Seahawks created a budding bromance.” Brewer clearly spotted a spark between Carroll and Schneider:

Expect them to take trips together (and not just to Mobile, Ala., for the Senior Bowl), give each other nicknames (prediction: PC and The Schneid) and wear matching clothes (even when their threads don’t have the Seahawks logo).

He went on to deem the Carroll/Schneider dynamic a “man crush,” and as beaten into the ground as both that term and “bromance” are, it’s hard to argue with Brewer’s characterization when Carroll, in describing his first meeting with Schneider, actually said:

“Something special happened between John and I.”

Yes, it certainly seems like this partnership is off to an auspicious start. Art Thiel at Seattle’s other print newspaper, the Post-Intelligencer (HA! Just kidding! The P-I is online-only now! Two print newspapers in one city, that’s rich!), concurred:

The bromance seemed to stop a little south of Brokeback Mountain, but the principals left little doubt about the professional connection between the two.

There’s that “bromance” word again – in both Seattle papers! Now, clearly, Carroll and Schneider share similar worldviews, which may well lead to a fruitful partnership. But surely Brewer and Thiel are taking things a bit far in their write-ups, no? After all, in watching Schneider’s press conference, despite the clear enthusiasm displayed by all parties, one mostly sees Schneider earnestly thanking his parents, as well as all the people he’s worked with who helped him advance professionally. Was this day really about a bromance? According to Thiel’s article:

“I was sweating like crazy,” [Schneider] said. “I was all jacked up. We started talking and I thought we were going to come across the table at each other a little bit there a couple of times. It was exciting.

“Pete and I, I felt like we could have stayed all night. I didn’t want to finish. I thought we could have kept going.”

Apparently…yes. This day was about a bromance. Well done, Art Thiel and Jerry Brewer.

The Washington Redskins and Seattle Seahawks are among the NFL’s happiest teams right now – they both fired their coaches (Jim Zorn and Jim Mora Jr.) and replaced them with the guys they really wanted (Mike Shanahan, formerly of the Denver Broncos, and USC’s Pete Carroll [pictured], respectively). But some prominent voices aren’t so satisfied with the way the searches played out.

These complaints assert that no minority candidates got a fair shot at the jobs, despite the teams’ mandatory compliance with the league’s “Rooney Rule” (named after Pittsburgh Steelers owner/U.S. ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney). The Rooney Rule says that whenever a team hires a head coach, it must interview at least one minority candidate. Though both teams technically complied, a closer look explains the scrutiny.

The Redskins’ interest in Shanahan was common knowledge well before Zorn was even fired, and certainly before they conducted their Rooney-Rule-complying interview with assistant Jerry Gray. To be fair, Gray said he didn’t have a problem with this. John Feinstein of the Washington Post was another matter.

In a similar case, the Seahawks were rumored to have all but locked up Carroll as early as Friday, when ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported and tweeted as much. Their Rooney-Rule-complying interview, with Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, didn’t take place until a day later. This led Sports Illustrated NFL writer Peter King to call the Frazier interview a “sham” on NBC, and reiterate the sentiment (with Twitter backing) in his latest column. Ex-Colts coach and current NBC analyst Tony Dungy, whose name caries as much weight in the coaching world as anyone’s, also expressed his displeasure with Seattle’s process.

The Rooney Rule has admirable goals, especially in a league where only six of 32 head coaches aren’t white (seven if the Buffalo Bills, currently looking for a coach, hire Frazier, which they’re apparently leaning toward doing). However, cases such as the Redskins’ and Seahawks’ sure make the Rooney Rule look like this Calvin and Hobbes strip – with no NFL equivalent of Calvin’s mom to lay down the law.

Sure, there’s the possibility that, say, Gray could have blown everyone away in his interview and landed the job (showcasing the positive aspects of the rule), but the fact is the Redskins (and Seahawks) already made up their minds when these interviews took place. They wanted big names (which Shanahan and Carroll are), and to have any chance, Gray and Frazier would have had to be involved in the search much earlier. The NFL will have to change the way coaching searches are conducted to truly level the playing field, and if they take much more heat this offseason, maybe it will happen.

Kelly met with his players on Monday afternoon, and confirmed his interest in the Notre Dame job on his Twitter feed.

“Just informed our team that Notre Dame has contacted me and I will listen to what they have to say,” he tweeted.

A New York Times article was more concerned with the effect  that statement had on Kelly’s page:

A Cincinnati spokesman said that the Bearcats were negotiating a new contract with Kelly. But Kelly has not hid his interest in Notre Dame. On Monday he wrote on Twitter: “Just informed our team that Notre Dame has contacted me and I will listen to what they have to say.” (His Twitter followers jumped to near 3,500 from around 1,800 in about four hours.)

One reporter, however, seemed to take  particular interest in the Kelly saga: ESPN blogger Brian Bennett. Kelly refused to discuss his job situation in the week leading up to, or directly after, Cincinnati’s 45-44 win over Pittsburgh,  which clinched the team’s second consecutive Big East championship and wrapped up an undefeated regular season. Shortly after this, Kelly appeared on the radio show of Sports Illustrated’s Dan Patrick and discussed – you guessed it – his job situation. That didn’t appear to sit so well with Bennett, who began this post with:

Brian Kelly isn’t going to talk about job speculation. Except, you know, when he feels like it.

In another post after Kelly’s Notre Dame tweet, Bennett appeared to again show annoyance with Kelly:

Brian Kelly doesn’t have to worry about the media spreading “misinformation,” as he lectured to us after Saturday’s win over Pitt. Kelly is announcing himself that he’s interviewing with Notre Dame.

Bennett went on to discuss the significance of Kelly’s announcement arriving via Twitter (which, as seen above, few others did):

This is fascinating to me outside of the job stuff. Coaches using Twitter to break their own news has become a recent trend, but a lot of the tweets are still very generic stuff. For a coach to announce that way that he’s talking to another school is pretty amazing.

Interestingly, Kelly also tweeted earlier today that he will not be interviewing at any point today, contrary to expectations. He also posted this picture (an ad for Accenture) that is bizarre on several levels, from the hoopla surrounding Tiger Woods to the (unintentional?) comment on Kelly’s in-limbo job status.

Bennett is correct in that Kelly’s recent tweets represent a new level of social media information-sharing by coaches. USC’s Pete Carroll has used Twitter to his advantage for some time now, and the media levelheadedness in the wake of Kelly’s tweet signifies that Twitter’s mainstream acceptance is only growing. The college coaching Twitter world, however, will remain incomplete unless Texas Tech’s Mike Leach has a change of heart and joins up. Watch him in this and this, and you’ll need more Leach in your life, too.

What: The New York Press Club’s book event for “Step Out on Nothing”

Where: McGraw Hill Building

When: November 10, 2009

Thumbs: Down

Byron Pitts said that producing a segment for a news show takes him exactly as long as the time available. Whether he has ten minutes or two hours, he meets every deadline. The same apparently holds true for his panels. They last exactly as long as the time allotted. The problem here was that Pitts only had enough material to fill a short segment and he was forced to go on much longer.

The true shame is that we actually liked Pitts. He told his story well, detailed in his new book, Step Out on Nothing, about how his personal struggles with a stutter and illiteracy held him back well into his teens. Motivation from his mother and a passion for broadcasting propelled Pitts forward in his studies and into his early working years (he revealed that his mother used to call his supervisors at work to check up on him). He’s a self-made man from Baltimore, the first in his family to graduate from college. Everything about his story is touching and inspiring.

Yet, Pitts too often fell back on telling childhood and workplace stories instead of sharing observations and insights about the media industry. He listed some of his most chilling moments – seeing Timothy McVeigh executed, covering 9/11 at the scene of the attacks, witnessing dying U.S. soldiers overseas – but never explained how he felt to be at those scenes.

Instead, Pitts talked at length about the two themes that have gotten him where he is today: his optimism and how he finds strength through struggles. He cited Tyler Perry, Pete Carroll and Rupert Murdoch as people who shared this world view with him, and touched on Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” to prove that dedication leads to benefits. While there are lessons to be learned from hearing about millionaires and a billionaire, we still would have liked to have gotten more of Pitts’ impressions.

Pitts frequently cited his book when answering questions, mentioning that there’s more contained inside. It was unclear to us whether his book was a memoir, autobiography or inspirational text. It was clear that Pitts is extremely proud that he’s risen out of the depths of poverty. We just wish we’d heard more about the years between his first job and his current one. “Optimism” only tells the surface of that story.

What They Said
“Growing up the way I did, I know what it’s like to be powerless.”
– Byron Pitts prefers to interview the overlooked ahead of the overexposed

“There are the things that make us Americans. A free press is vital to our democracy. As long as there is America there will be a place for journalists.”
– Byron Pitts isn’t worried about downsizing and the uncertain future of media

“People don’t watch in part because news rooms don’t reflect the world we live in.”
– Byron Pitts encourages networks to hire more diverse anchors and correspondents

“The people who are the most successful in my business are themselves because people recognize what is real.”
– Byron Pitts took Ben Stiller’s “Starsky and Hutch” Advice to heart

What We Thought

• This was the first media event we’ve ever been to that began early. We arrived minutes before the called time, but walked in after the event had begun. We found this regrettable because usually the introductions set the tone for the rest of the night, and, even if it was only a few minutes, we felt we were way behind the rest.
• Pitts said that he ruled out being a print journalist because it was a solo game and he preferred to be a part of a team. We liked Pitts’ commitment to camaraderie which comes, Pitts says, at the expense of intimacy with the subjects he covers.

PANEL RULES!
Some audience behavior seems to repeat itself panel after panel. We’ll be updating a running list of “PANEL RULES!” that will help ensure that you are not the dweeb of the Panel Nerds.

Panel Nerds don’t like…Sour Apples
There were an incredible number of journalism students and struggling journalists at this event. So much so that pretty much every question thrown at Pitts was geared around the failures of the journalism world and the pitfalls and setbacks that individuals had encountered. Although those remain pivotal issues at an unstable time, we couldn’t help but long for a time before doomsday set in. After enduring four questions about layoffs and rotten bosses, we were ready for something lighter and brighter. What we got was a question about China’s restrictions on its press. We guess it could always be worse.

Panel Nerds Etan Bednarsh and Danny Groner are New York-based writers and avid panel-goers. Want them at your panel? Email them here: PanelNerds@mediaite.com.
Read an excerpt from “Step Out on Nothing” here.