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Of his decision to leave USC, Pete Carroll said: “There was never going to be a good time.”
Then again, if your university is under investigation, some times are better than others.
It’s worth noting that Carroll’s four years as a head coach in the NFL resulted in the same number of playoff victories that Mark Sanchez has now achieved in his rookie season. Yet he abruptly abandoned L.A.’s only big-time football operation for a minor-league outfit in Seattle. What’s more, he wants you to believe it has absolutely nothing to do with a famously stalled probe into illicit benefits Reggie Bush accepted while at Southern Cal.
“If you say something else, you’re not telling the truth,” he said Monday at his farewell news conference at Heritage Hall.
In other words: If you don’t believe me, you’re lying. Once again, like most stories about seven-figure coaches in ostensibly amateur athletics, this one engenders mostly cynicism. Woefully unmentioned in accounts of Carroll’s sudden good fortune — a $7 million-a-year gig with the Seahawks that miraculously “came out of nowhere” — is a recent court ruling in San Diego.
On Dec. 28, the California Court of Appeal denied Bush’s request to compel confidential arbitration in a suit brought by Lloyd Lake, a would-be marketing agent who claims he provided the former Trojans star and his family with cash and gifts worth $291,000. The case, like the NCAA investigation, has been around for years. But Lake’s lawyers can get something the NCAA cannot: subpoenas.
And the moment Bush lost his appeal, they were working to depose him, his family and the man who made Angelenos forget about the NFL.
“I do find it curious,” Lake’s attorney, Brian Watkins, said of Carroll’s timing.
Did the impending deposition have an effect on Carroll’s decision? I asked.
“I’m sure it did,” he said. “…That’s why they fought so hard to get confidential arbitration.”
I don’t know whether Southern Cal is guilty or whether Bush will be held liable in civil court. I just know transparency is not regarded as good news at Heritage Hall, where Carroll conducted his goodbye news conference Monday afternoon. Watkins is now free to compel the testimony the NCAA has been unable to extract since 2006, when its investigation began.
Way back then, USC was the envy of every program in America. Carroll had already won a couple of national championships and the fourth of his seven consecutive Pac-10 crowns. Bush was the third of Carroll’s players to win the Heisman — in four years. Little wonder that movie stars vied for face time on the Coliseum’s sidelines.
Now it’s different. The entire athletic department is embattled. Men’s basketball has voluntarily forfeited the postseason for a street agent’s payments made to O.J. Mayo. One hears the university has sacrificed basketball for the sake of football.
Plausible gossip. But here are the facts: After Sanchez left to compete in the pros — a move Carroll publicly criticized — the coach’s vision for a true freshman quarterback failed. The team went 5-4 in the conference, fifth in the Pac-10. Running back Joe McKnight was kept out of the Emerald Bowl after the Los Angeles Times reported he was driving around in a Range Rover that wasn’t his. Most recently, SI.com reported former USC assistant Dave Watson was addicted to painkillers and would routinely obtain them from team doctors. He testified he told Carroll of his addiction three months before getting into a wreck with his university-issued Jeep.
Then there’s the Bush investigation, or, as Carroll dismissively refers to it, “the stuff.” As in: “The stuff … has been ongoing for five years now. … It has no factor.”
Just for the record, salary wasn’t a factor, either. “It wasn’t about money,” he said. “It was about the challenge.”
He may believe that, but I don’t. Nor should you. If Carroll really wanted a challenge, he’d restore a fifth-place team to its customary standing atop the conference standings and the national polls. If he really wanted to do the right thing, he’d see the program he re-created, and the university he claims to love, through this investigation.
“I thought I would be here forever,” he said.
A lot of people did. USC is a dream job. But apparently not dreamier than the Seattle Seahawks. “The challenge of a lifetime,” as Carroll referred to the Seattle coaching job, “came along really quickly.”
According to Yahoo!Sports, “Carroll has been aware for weeks of the specific violations the NCAA may be alleging against his program.” Then he found out he could no longer dodge a deposition.
There has been a lot of talk about how he will fare in the pros. He has already failed with two NFL teams. And as Tony Dungy noted, it’s more difficult to motivate rich men than poor teenagers. There’s a reason college coaches are so notoriously bad in the pros.
Consider John McKay, another championship coach who left USC after finishing fifth in the conference. He accepted an even greater challenge than the Seahawks. It was called the Tampa Bay Bucs. And he lived to regret it for the rest of his days.
Then again, considering where this story is headed, Carroll has less in common with John McKay than John Calipari.
