Monte Burke | Pete Carroll, Steve Huff & The Obsession That Separates the Truly Great | Tom Rowland Podcast Ep. 1006

The first time Monte Burke sat at this microphone, the conversation was Lords of the Fly — the tarpon obsession, Homosassa, Stu Apt, the world records, the part of the sport that doesn't really exist anymore. That episode was almost five years ago. Yesterday's conversation, Episode 1006, is what happens after Monte spends those five years writing two more books in six months — one on Pete Carroll's USC dynasty, and a new edition of Lords of the Fly built around Steve Huff and a companion collection of saltwater stories called Rivers Always Reach the Sea. The thread he kept pulling on while writing both is the same thread he has been pulling on for his entire career. The word is obsession.

Monte has now answered the question this podcast keeps coming back to — what separates the truly great from everybody else — across two completely different worlds. College football coaches. Saltwater fly fishing guides. The Pete Carroll book, the Steve Huff stories, the Nick Saban work, the time on the bow with Tom Evans and Andy Mill and Nat Linville — it all points at the same set of people doing the same set of things. The conversation is about what that set of things actually is.

Key Takeaways

• Monte wrote two books in six months — the Pete Carroll USC book and a new edition of Lords of the Fly. Splitting his head between college football and fly fishing is what keeps the work fresh; each subject is the off-season for the other.
• Almost everything Monte has written about, for his entire career, is some version of one word: obsession.
• Purpose is not the same as saving the world. It can be as small as showing up at work on time and taking good care of your kids and your dog.
• The Pete Carroll book is not a biography of a man — it is the biography of a nine-year window at USC. Two titles, six inches from a third, the scandal at the end.
• Steve Huff is on the bow at the March Merkin as Monte and Tom record, guiding Carl Hiaasen — his first tournament since the 1990s. He just turned eighty.
• The truly great share three things: innate sight, hunger for the journey, and work habits that do not feel like work.
• Monte is openly anti-AI. He considers AI-generated work the definition of plagiarism and is worried about the entry-level jobs his college-age kids will need.

Two Books in Six Months Is a Mistake — And It's the Mistake That Makes the Work Better

The first thing Monte said when we started yesterday's conversation is that he would not recommend a future version of himself ever publishing two books in six months again. The publicity cycle alone for one book is about a month and a half of nonstop promotion. Stack two of those and the year disappears.

Then he immediately walked it back. The reason he is fine with the schedule is that the two subjects were on opposite ends of his brain. The Pete Carroll book is college football. The new edition of Lords of the Fly and the companion collection Rivers Always Reach the Sea are saltwater fly fishing. Splitting his attention between those two worlds works the same way an off-season works in a sport — by the time he is done with the college football book he is starving to write about fly fishing, and by the time he wraps the fly fishing book he is ready to go back to football. He told me he wrote three fly fishing stories in a creative spree the minute the Saban and Carroll promotion cycles slowed down.

Monte currently has six half-done — really five-percent-done — book projects living on a sheet of paper. He goes back to that sheet between projects and picks the one with the most heat. People keep asking him why college football and fly fishing. His mother, who is from Alabama, has a better answer than he does. She tells him she is glad he finally put to use the hours he spent as a kid watching college football and fishing. The networks, he pointed out, stack bass fishing shows next to college football for a reason. They know who the audience is.

The Pete Carroll Book Is the Biography of a Window — Not a Man

The book is not a biography of Pete Carroll in the conventional sense. It opens with where Carroll was born and grew up, and then stops when Carroll leaves USC for the Seahawks. There is some Seahawks material in the back end, but the spine of the book is the nine years Carroll spent at USC.

The reason, Monte said, is that the USC chapter is the chapter that will never happen again. Carroll came into USC with his tail between his legs. Fired by the Jets. Fired by the Patriots. A year out of football entirely. He was the third or fourth candidate USC went after — they had wanted other people first. He inherited a downtrodden program, the way Saban inherited a downtrodden Alabama. He took over Troy Polamalu and Carson Palmer as part of what the previous staff had left him. Then the magic happened — two national titles in a row, six inches from a third, which has never been done in the modern era of college football. At the end of the run, the scandal. As a writer, Monte said, you do not get cleaner narrative arcs than that.

The detail that put it all in focus — when Carroll was at USC there were no NFL teams in Los Angeles. None. USC was the team in town. The cultural footprint of that program in that city during those nine years has no equivalent now. That window is what the book is actually a biography of. Monte added that Carroll is, in his words, "loosey-goosey, a player's coach" — and at the same time insanely disciplined and insanely hardworking. The two things are not in tension. They sit on top of each other.

What Football Coaches and Fishing Guides Have in Common

I asked Monte what stood out to him about the high-level coaches he has written about, lined up next to the high-level guides he has fished with. He has been on both sides of this question for years.

One — obsession is the entry point. All of them were obsessed with their craft before they were good at it. Steve Huff only ever wanted to be a fishing guide. He started terrible — Steve will admit it himself. He felt bad for the very first sucker who was his first client. Every push of the pole, though, was meaningful to him from day one. The obsession came first. The competence built on top of it.

Two — the minutiae are the whole game. There is nobody more obsessed with the minutiae of football than Nick Saban. Saban worries about how the cornerback's hips are lined up. What is being made in the cafeteria. How long the studs are on the shoes. Steve Huff is the same way on a skiff — how the leader is tied, how the boat is angled, whether the client wants an eleven-thirty shot or a twelve o'clock shot. Stu Apt would stay up all night tying and re-tying leaders. The high-level coaches and the high-level guides are obsessed with the same kind of details — small, technical, infinitely refinable.

Three — the coach-guide overlap is closer than the coach-player overlap. The job of a college football head coach, Monte said, is to inhabit five or six personas at once. CEO. Teacher. Recruiter. Psychologist. Priest, sometimes. Media celebrity. Steve Huff on a skiff is doing the same thing — reading the flat, communicating it to the angler, encouraging, scolding, sometimes silently. Monte told the story of the first tarpon he ever caught with Steve — fish laid up everywhere, Monte completely unraveling, throwing it into the head of every fish on the flat. Steve kept telling him just one good cast. Eventually Monte made one. He still flushed the fish, but the cast felt the way a perfect three-iron feels in golf — a kind of wonderful non-feeling. The second it happened he believed Steve. They caught one that day.

That moment Monte described is the moment every great coach is engineering for. Saban does it on a sideline. Huff does it on a poling platform. The mechanics are the same. The boat is just smaller.

What Separates the Truly Great

The question I wanted to ask Monte more than any other yesterday is the one this podcast keeps coming back to. He has been on the bow with legendary guides. He has been close to legendary coaches. What separates the truly great from the good?

Three pieces stacked together.

Something innate. Monte's framing — somebody is born with thirty-five percent of what it takes to be great. The way a fishing guide sees a flat. The way a football coach sees a whole game in motion. That sight is in there before anybody trains for it. Plenty of innately talented people end up selling insurance instead.

Hunger for the journey. The great ones fall in love with the minutiae. There is an old cliche — it is not the destination, it is the journey. Monte pushed back. You need the destination to define the journey. Without it, the journey has no shape. The trick is loving the small steps — constructing a sentence, finding the right word, choosing which chapter goes where. Loving the input. That is what makes a writer a writer. That is what makes a coach a coach. That is what makes a guide a guide.

Work. Monte and I both used the word discipline, and Monte made a distinction I want to keep — for the people inside the obsession, discipline is not the right word. The word implies friction. The truly great are not fighting themselves to show up. They are showing up because they are pulled. Steve Huff is eighty. He does not give away a single push of the pole. That is not discipline in the modern productivity-content sense. That is somebody who has been pulled by the work for sixty years and has not figured out how to stop. People with innate talent are common. People with the journey-hunger and the work habits stacked on top are rare. That is the gap.

Steve Huff Is Eighty And Still Poling — And There Is News

Steve Huff just turned eighty. Monte got me with a piece of news I had not heard. Steve, who has not fished a tournament in something like thirty years — the last one Monte could remember was a Gold Cup back in the 1990s — is on the bow at the March Merkin as we record, guiding Carl Hiaasen.

I asked Monte how Hiaasen talked him into it. His guess is that Carl, in the way Carl is in just about everything, was completely relentless. We are doing this. We are doing this. We are doing this. Steve eventually said something to the effect of why not? The March Merkin is permit, and Steve is exactly the kind of guide who thinks every permit on the flat is catchable. He does not think they are nuisance fish — he thinks you just have to do it right.

Steve is now mostly guiding a small group of close friends — about twelve people total. He still bicycles a tremendous amount with his wife. They started by bicycling from Everglades City to a town in Washington State, then turned around and bicycled all the way back. They have bicycled in Ireland, Canada, all over Europe. He has a yard full of palm trees from all over the world. He is a heavy reader — Monte and Steve trade book recommendations every time they fish together. World War II history by default, but he will take a good novel if Monte hands him one.

I asked Monte to name three novels he would put in anyone's hands. The Great Gatsby — which Monte said feels more pertinent now than it has in a long time. Light Years by James Salter — sentence-by-sentence gorgeous, his favorite book of all time. Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison — a steelhead guide who wrote a True-Grit-style Western with a lead character a little different than what you would expect. Monte has been recommending that one for ten years and thinks it will get made into a movie eventually.

The Del Brown story Monte told yesterday will stay with me longest. Huff and Del Brown fished together for decades and essentially invented permit on fly as a sport. The end of the partnership came on a day so windy Steve poled for forty-five minutes into a twenty-five-mile-an-hour wind to get into position. When they got there, Del sat down. He was around eighty-two. He looked up at Steve and said I cannot do it. Steve put the motor back in and idled home, bawling the entire way back, knowing it was the end. Del was sitting in front of him on the bow and could not see him. At the dock Steve embraced Del and told him they were not fishing together anymore. Steve's quote — Del got old and it broke his heart.

Monte's Argument Against AI

About midway through yesterday's conversation Monte stopped and asked if he could note his bias. As a working nonfiction writer his livelihood is directly threatened by AI — he could see a magazine deciding not to send the next twenty-something writer to Chile when they can prompt a chatbot for the same article in twenty seconds. That bias acknowledged, he gave me the most direct anti-AI argument I have heard from a working writer.

Three legs. The ethical one — Monte cited Ethan Hawke's framing that AI-generated work is the definition of plagiarism. The presentation of work as your own that is not your own. You prompted it. Good for you. You did not write it. The cognitive one — the act of writing, even writing an email, is the biomechanical part of thinking. He cannot understand why we would voluntarily hand that part over to machines. If the trend goes where he thinks it is going, the world will be machine writing talking to machine writing, and the humanity gets boiled out of the exchange. The labor one, the one he cares most about as a parent — he has kids in college. He wants them to have entry-level jobs when they graduate. The entry-level jobs are exactly the ones AI is going to wipe out first. Monte quoted Marc Andreessen saying that in twenty years nobody will have to work. To Monte, that is a nightmare. Humans need purpose. The middle of writing a book is the happiest Monte said he is as a human, and the reason is that he has purpose. Take that engine out of human life across a society and the math gets ugly fast.

He landed where he usually lands. He cannot stand AI. He did not ask for it. He does not know anyone who did.

The Purpose Conversation — Or, What to Tell Your Kids When They Get Out of College

I have three kids and they have all graduated college. Monte has not had one graduate yet, and he said he is a little terrified. My middle son, after college, went traveling for a while on money he had saved through school. He came back and there was a struggle — the purpose question. The advice young people are getting now is that they need to find their purpose, and Monte and I both think that advice gets distorted on the way out.

The distortion is that young people seem to be hearing they have to save the world. The version of purpose I tried to give my son — and the version Monte said he is going to try to give his kids — is much smaller. Purpose is responsibility. Purpose is showing up at work on time. Purpose can be as small as taking good care of your kids, taking good care of your dog, exercising, working hard at something that matters to you. The whole thing is about work. The whole thing is about friction.

What AI promises, Monte said, is to remove the friction. The friction is the entire point. A workout you outsourced to your agent and then took a protein shake after did not actually happen. Social media compounds the problem. Everybody is showing you their best. Nobody is showing you the twenty-four hours they spent curled up under the bed with food poisoning. The digital world makes it harder for people to sit down, calm down, and actually think about what matters to them.

The reason almost everything Monte has ever written about traces back to obsession is that obsession cuts through all of that noise. Whether you collect baseball cards, chase the world record tarpon, or love working out, that obsession animates a life. People without any obsessions, Monte said, end up entertaining themselves to death. Netflix all day. Social media all day. A relatively empty life. The reason Monte is obsessed with obsessed people, in his own words, is that he loves seeing how animated somebody becomes when they are pulled by something larger than themselves. Saban. Carroll. Huff. Apt. Evans. Mill. The obsessions are different. The engine is the same.

The Boat Is Where Captains of Industry Become Twelve Years Old Again

One of my favorite tangents from yesterday is the conversation about why captains of industry — Fortune 500 CEOs, hedge fund operators, the people who run things — become twelve-year-olds the second they step onto a flats boat. The bosses get on a boat and hand the day over to a guide who runs them around for ten hours and tells them what to do.

Monte cited the line from Steve Huff in Lords of the Fly — a Prudential CEO, or somebody at that level, got on Steve's boat and started telling Steve where to run. I think we should go over here, Steve. Steve told him he was done. Off the boat. You need to sublimate your ego for a little while.

The deeper version of why it works is the thing Monte put plainly. These clients are on a boat with somebody who literally wants nothing from them other than their success at what they came for. That is a relationship most successful people never have. Everywhere else, somebody wants fifteen minutes of their time. On the boat, the guide wants exactly one thing — the client to catch the fish they came for. The clients who figure that out are the ones who book a hundred days. They are buying the only relationship in their life that does not have a tax on it. Steve Huff has described himself, Monte said, as a dream maker. Not a fishing guide. My job is to make people's dreams come true.

The Transferable-Skill Question — Or, Why Andy Mill Became the Tiger Woods of Tarpon

Monte closed with the part of his theory I want to keep thinking about. People who get very good at one thing tend to be able to get very good at almost anything they pick up next. The mindset transfers. The work habits transfer. The pattern recognition transfers.

The clean case is Andy Mill. Monte has a story on Andy in Rivers Always Reach the Sea. Andy was a downhill skier — one of the top ten in the world, finished sixth at the Olympics. The Europeans called him wildhund, wild dog, because of the insane lines he would take on a course. Andy has said he does not feel like he reached his full potential as a ski racer. When he came back to the United States and got serious about tarpon tournament angling, he basically became the Tiger Woods of the sport. Andy started his second career from a baseline most people never get to. He had already been excellent. He knew what excellent felt like. He had paid for it once. He was just transferring the engine from skiing to tarpon. Andy himself has called tarpon tournament fishing his redemption.

The other case Monte mentioned is the subject of his first college football book, Fourth and Goal. The CEO of TD Ameritrade had always wanted to coach college football. He had coached at Dartmouth at twenty-five and then moved into finance for the rest of his career. He quit at sixty and went looking for a college football job. Nobody would hire him — they saw a rich weird older guy chasing a midlife thing. He finally got hired at Coastal Carolina and turned that program around. The same engine — leadership, people management, discipline — running on a completely different track.

The transfer does not always work — Monte mentioned Bill Campbell, a great finance guy who was a bad football coach. The exception is not the rule. The rule is that the engine is portable. If you can become world-class at one thing, you can probably do it in anything you actually care about. The journey is portable. The destination is whatever you decide to point the engine at.

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Final Thoughts From Me

The reason I keep having Monte back is that he writes about the same kind of people I have spent my entire life around — the obsessed ones. The fly guides who do not turn the day off. The coaches who do not let the cornerback's hips be slightly wrong. The anglers who refuse to accept that today's permit are not catchable. The writer who finishes one book and immediately writes three magazine pieces because he cannot stand the quiet.

Yesterday's conversation gave me a cleaner way of saying the thing I have been trying to say on this podcast for a long time. The truly great are not separated by some mystical talent. They are separated by a stack — innate sight, hunger for the small steps, work habits they do not experience as work. Monte spent five years writing about those people from two completely different angles and came back with the same answer.

One detail stuck with me hardest. When Monte described the woman in Sarasota who walked up to him at a book signing with her son's beat-up, washing-machine-soaked, underlined copy of Lords of the Fly — the kid was fourteen when he started reading it and is eighteen now — Monte said the upwelling of gratitude almost broke him. All you want, as a writer, is for somebody out there to love it too. That moment is the same moment a guide gets the first time a client lays the cast exactly where the cast needed to be. The work is the point. The connection on the other end is what tells you the work was worth it. Monte is going to be in the Keys next month fishing with Steve Huff. I will see them out there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this Monte Burke's second time on the Tom Rowland Podcast?
Yes. Monte's first appearance was Episode 351, Lords of the Fly: The Tarpon Obsession, almost five years before this conversation.

What is Monte Burke's new Pete Carroll book about?
The biography of a nine-year window — Carroll's USC years from 2001 through 2009. Monte deliberately stops the narrative when Carroll leaves USC for the Seahawks. It covers the Jets and Patriots firings, his hiring at USC as a third or fourth choice candidate, the inherited Polamalu and Carson Palmer pieces, two national titles, a third missed by six inches, and the NCAA scandal at the end.

What is Rivers Always Reach the Sea?
Monte's collection of saltwater fly fishing stories, including long-form pieces on Steve Huff, Tom Evans, Andy Mill, Nat Linville, John O'Hearn, Lefty Kreh, and Stu Apt. Released last June. A companion to the new edition of Lords of the Fly.

Is Steve Huff still guiding?
Yes, but with a narrow client list — about a dozen close friends. Steve is poling for Carl Hiaasen at the March Merkin permit tournament as Monte and Tom record — his first tournament since sometime in the 1990s. Steve just turned eighty.

What is Monte's view on AI?
Three reasons he opposes it. AI-generated work is the definition of plagiarism (citing Ethan Hawke). The act of writing is the biomechanical part of thinking, and outsourcing it hollows out the human exchange. The entry-level jobs his college-age kids are going to need are the ones AI is going to wipe out first.

What does Monte think separates the truly great from the good?
Three things stacked together. Something innate — the way a coach sees a whole game or a guide sees a whole flat. Hunger for the journey — falling in love with the minutiae. Work habits that do not feel like work, because the person is being pulled by an obsession rather than fighting themselves for discipline.

What three novels does Monte Burke recommend?
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Light Years by James Salter — his favorite book of all time. Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison — a True-Grit-style Western by a steelhead guide.

What does Monte tell young people about finding purpose?
That purpose is much smaller than the way it gets talked about. Not saving the world — responsibility. Showing up at work on time. Taking good care of the kids and the dog. Working hard at something that matters. The friction is the point.

How long has Tom been a fishing guide?
Over twenty years. Tom started guiding in the Florida Keys in 1994.

How many children does Monte Burke have?
Three. All currently in college.

Sponsors

People Mentioned

• Monte Burke — New York Times bestselling author. Saban, Lords of the Fly, Rivers Always Reach the Sea, Fourth and Goal, and the new Pete Carroll USC book.
• Pete Carroll — Head coach at USC 2001–2009. Two national titles. Subject of Monte's new book.
• Steve Huff — Eighty-year-old Florida Keys guide. Subject of new long-form pieces in Monte's recent saltwater work.
• Nick Saban — Subject of Monte's Saban: The Making of a Coach. The most obsessed person Monte has written about.
• Del Brown — Late saltwater fly angler. Held the record for permit on fly. Steve Huff's longtime partner and the other half of the story that created the sport.
• Tom Evans — Legendary saltwater fly angler and world-record holder.
• Andy Mill — Former U.S. downhill skier (sixth at the Olympics) who became the dominant figure in modern tarpon tournament angling.
• Nathaniel Linville, John O'Hearn, Stu Apt, Lefty Kreh — Saltwater fly guides and pioneers featured across Monte's recent work.
• Carl Hiaasen — Author of Double Whammy, Tom's gateway book into reading. Currently fishing with Steve Huff at the March Merkin.
• Marc Andreessen, Ethan Hawke — Cited by Monte in the AI argument.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Salter, John Larison — Authors of Monte's three novel recommendations.

Free Resource

Monte's books — Lords of the Fly, Rivers Always Reach the Sea, Saban: The Making of a Coach, Fourth and Goal, and the new Pete Carroll USC book — are available wherever books are sold and on Monte's own website. You can also reach Monte directly through the contact email at the bottom of his site. He answers email himself.

Guest Bio: Monte Burke

Monte Burke is a New York Times bestselling author who has spent his career writing about obsessed people — football coaches, fly fishing guides, hedge fund operators, CEOs, world-record anglers. He spent fifteen years on staff at Forbes, where he wrote on subjects ranging from billion-dollar finance to saltwater fishing. His books include Saban: The Making of a Coach, Fourth and Goal, Lords of the Fly, Rivers Always Reach the Sea, and a new book on Pete Carroll's USC dynasty. He grew up in Alabama, has three children currently in college, and counts Florida Keys saltwater fly fishing as the obsession he keeps coming back to. He fishes with Steve Huff every chance he gets.

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