Pete Carroll Should Keep his Mouth Shut

There was not much gray area when discussing the sanctions that hit USC a few years ago. Most people either felt that they were justified as USC had lost some control over a program that had a number of transgressions or that the NCAA had hit the program too hard as some of the mistakes were committed by individual players and not the program as a whole. One thing both sides agreed on was that coach Pete Carroll knew the sanctions were coming and jumped on the Seattle Seahawks offer in 2010 to escape them. Being that he took the pro job only a few months before the NCAA made its announcement lent a lot of credence to that notion, shared by people on both sides of the debate. It really would be impossible for Carroll to prove otherwise. Yet there he was in a recent interview claiming that he did not jump ship. He left solely because of a wonderful offer and he claimed that he did not know when, or even if, sanctions were coming. He even said that if he had known of the sanctions and their severity he would have stayed to help the program get through troubled times. Please. How could anyone believe him? Why would anyone bother? Leaving to re-prove yourself in the pros is fine but saying you would stay to help clean up your own mess is disingenuous. And USC's hiring Kiffin made the situation even worse, but that is a different story.

View From Bennett Avenue

Now who thought college football was done once the BCS title game ended? The domino effect that goes into play once a big name coach changes jobs is shaking up the sport right now.
Now I do not have too much good to say about Pete Carroll, except that he produced wins. I will give him his due in that regard. But his getting in bed with marketers and agents, while allowing his kids to run roughshod over the community was appalling. The USC family did not care as they wanted to return to national championship contention after a long drought. So they looked the other way. That must have applied to other sports too as their basketball program is imploding as well due to past violations. After an unbelievable delay, the NCAA is threatening to present their case in 2010. It is long overdue and has to be a solid one after all of these years.
So, the Trojans, faced with the absence of the coach on whose watch the alleged NCAA violations occurred, had two choices. Go with the goody two-shoes coach as a way to show the NCAA that we will be good boys and girls from now on. Or do what USC ended up doing--hire a guy who is currently under NCAA investigation for what he did at another school! Huh? And he may as well bring back the recruiting coordinator who had the same job at USC when the alleged violations began.
What is even funnier is that the new head guy, Lane Kiffin, has never won anything. Norm Chow built the Trojans offense into the powerhouse it became in 2005. But that year he had moved on after Carroll showed him less and less respect--which was especially ridiculous as Carroll's reclamation work with USC would have been ten times harder without Chow--and the coordinator spot was filled jointly by Kiffin and current Washington coach Steve Sarkisian. With all of the inherited talent they had to work with, including Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart, Kiffin and Sarkisian just had to get the hell out of the way for that unit to score 50 pts per game. But I digress. Kiffin, somehow, turned a share of a college coordinator job into a head coaching gig with the Raiders. That, of course, blew up in his face. We all gave him a pass for that one--after all it was Al Davis--but fully expected the kid to go back and learn some more about this head coaching thing. Instead he lands one of the better jobs in college football as head man with Tennessee, where he proceeds in 14 months to embarrass himself and the program--and win one more game than he lost. The teams he beat this year? Western Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, South Carolina, Memphis, Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Not one of them whiffed the final top 25 and three will have new head coaches in 2010.
So, good luck USC. You are going to need it. And as for Tennessee, make sure your next hire is someone who can both coach and represent your university in the best possible light. They are still out there...I think.

View From Bennett Avenue

Well let the speculation begin. With Nick Saban just winning a national championship with a second FBS program, let's guess where Pete Carroll will end up once the situation in Seattle ends poorly and he decides to return to the college game. It's bound to happen, right? UCLA? That would be funny. My guess is Arizona State.
Actually I fully believe that Carroll will do well in the pros. He was not as bad as advertised before and is a better coach now. But please, stop with the denials that the upcoming sanctions did not effect your decision.
As for USC, it has been a bad week. The basketball program is sinking fast, the football program is in trouble, baseball grad Mark McGwire admitted to steroid use and their top-ranked men's volleyball team got beat by Hawaii (the school not the state). Well at least you still have the Song Girls.