Carroll takes Trojans' horse with him into NFL sunset
Wonder what Will Ferrell is thinking today.
Or Snoop Dogg.
Or Lane Kiffin.
Pete Carroll's Southern California is gone. The best of times at the school they attended (Ferrell), adopted (Snoop) and coached at (Kiffin) is now stored on video and in our memories.
Oh, USC will win again even though Carroll has resigned to reportedly take the Seattle Seahawks job. It will go to Rose Bowls and compete for national championships. Maybe soon, depending on whom the school hires. But it will never be the same in South Central without Pete Carroll.
Nine years ago, he swept aside everything Paul Hackett with energy and determination and wit. He was the fourth choice of AD Mike Garrett, who didn't seem to know how to conduct a coaching search but got lucky as hell. A coach on the rebound met the program on the rebound.
It took half a season after USC started 1-4 in 2001. Three Heismans, two national championships and seven consecutive BCS bowls followed. John McKay had set the standard. Carroll grabbed the baton and kept sprinting.
Pete injected a personality we thought he never had into a rudderless program. Who knew that an out-of-work average former NFL coach from the University of Pacific had these kind of chops?
From the get go, he was recruiting. Not just players either. In 2005, Pat Ruel was happy with his NFL job with the New York Giants. Carroll convinced the veteran offensive line coach to come out and talk about a job. It took one lunch with Carroll in Manhattan Beach on a cloudless sunny day with the waves crashing in the background for Ruel to change jobs.
Carroll's coaching tree continues to grow. Steve Sarkisian is at Washington and has already been mentioned as a possible replacement. Kiffin took some of Carroll's exuberance with him to Tennessee. Carroll allowed them to run USC's offense while still in their early 30's. Both run their practices the same as Pete did at USC.
Players loved him. Recruits flocked to him. In one three-year period, 40 true freshmen saw the field for the Trojans. The downside was that a lot of those players developed quickly and went to the NFL after three years. The upside was that the cycle started all over again. Carroll sold that possibility to the next round of recruits.
Pete embraced the history, tradition, the hype, the hangers on. Even the media.
Open locker rooms, open practices, Win Forever. Game day at the Coliseum, sellouts, Tommy Trojan, the Song Girls. I walked off the field with Matt Leinart a night after he beat Notre Dame at home. The look in his eyes told me the kid knew his whole life was about to change.
Matt, you had no idea.
God, you not only wanted to cover it, you wanted to be part of it.
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Dodd: Carroll resigns at USC |
There are two enduring images I will take away from the Carroll era now that he has flown to the Seahawks:
• During a practice in the mid-2000s, a guy in full uniform rolled up in a golf cart. He stepped out, lined up for a play and caught a bomb from Matt Leinart.
Ferrell then took off his helmet and yukked it up with the players. He wasn't the first. Snoop showed up and mingled with players. Carroll embraced the Hollywood vibe. Celebs loved the players and the players loved them back. They were stars to the Hollywood stars.
• J.R. Moehringer's fine profile of Carroll in Los Angeles Magazine called, "23 Reasons Why A Profile of Pete Carroll Does Not Appear In This Space." Every coach, player and aspiring journalist should read it. Not only does it define the man/coach, it defines fine writing.
Moehringer's story is a reason why we love the sport so much. College football still has that real innocence, pathos, tragedy and unbridled joy that is simply not possible, or manufactured, at the next level.
During the Pete Carroll years, it was never an assignment to come out, it was a working vacation. You wanted to jump into the drills where players looked like they were having -- ear muffs, Nick Saban -- fun. At times, Pete himself would play quarterback.
After one interview in his office, I had to strain to hear his voice while transcribing from a digital recorder. Pete had the Foo Fighters cranked in the background.
When I shook hands with him on the ESPN set Thursday before the BCS championship game, it was with an understanding that we would see each other soon.
Now I'm not sure. The NFL sucks the life out of a man. Carroll might be wildly successful in Seattle, but I'm fairly confident he will not win 83.6 percent of his games in the No Fun League. That works out to slightly better than 13-3 each season.
Until 2009, Carroll had the program dialed into 12-1 each season. It's a lot harder winning 10 in a league legislated for everyone to go 8-8.
No one, though, can blame him for leaving. Seattle is giving him 35 million reasons over five years to jump from La-La Land to Latte Land. The NFL was always a possibility, like a thunderstorm on the horizon. Pete interviewed with at least two teams while at USC.
"He'll always listen," one of his coaches once said.
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| Pete Carroll kept things light around his program and welcomed stars such as Snoop Dogg to practices. (Getty Images) |
There are serious NCAA problems to consider. Some will interpret his move as getting out ahead of the posse. Basketball already has been sacrificed as a show of good faith to the NCAA. Will the Reggie Bush situation go away? Carroll and Bush have been deposed as part of an ongoing lawsuit by one of Bush's former representatives.
Did Pete run a loose ship? Perhaps, but he wasn't helped by a compliance department and AD that seemingly couldn't keep tabs on its top players. The NCAA might hammer football but Pete's ultimate legacy will be the wins, not the dirty laundry.
Even if the NCAA never came snooping around, though, no one can truly Win Forever. (That's Pete's motto).
The dynasty, then, is over. If 2009's 9-4 backslide didn't convince you, then the latest developments should. In a 24-hour period, quarterback Aaron Corp transferred to Richmond and juniors Damian Williams and Joe McKnight declared for the NFL.
Even if they had stayed, for the first time in nine years a team other than USC would have been picked to win the Pac-10 in 2010. Despite a Rose Bowl loss to Ohio State, Oregon will likely start in the top 10 and be favored to win the league.
The last team not coached by Pete Carroll at USC lost to Notre Dame, finished 5-7 and ended up tied for last in the Pac-10.
The dynasty is over. I first wrote those words in 2006, when USC lost at Oregon State. More startling losses to inferior teams followed -- Stanford, UCLA, Oregon State again. But it was always with the understanding that with Pete in command the Trojans could get back their strut in a heartbeat.
But when it began to crumble, there was the increased likelihood that Carroll would leave. In the past decade we've seen Miami's dynasty come to an end. Florida may lose its grip on the SEC with the uncertainty surrounding Urban Meyer and with Alabama getting ready to string together a bunch of championships.
USC was lucky to have Carroll for this long. Saban just won a national championship and is on his fourth job since 1999. Meyer has been a head coach at three different schools since 2001. That's your short list for the top three coaches of the past decade.
It was fitting that the front-page story in Saturday's Los Angeles Times chronicling Carroll's imminent departure jumped to the obit page. There, readers learned about the death of the creator of Gumby.
He was a USC grad.
Win Forever couldn't last. It hurts to write that now that Pete Carroll's USC is gone forever.
