Pete Carroll Says He Wouldn't Have Left USC For Seattle If He Had Known NCAA Sanctions Were Coming

Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll now has a Super Bowl title on his résumé. But he wouldn’t have that Lombardi Trophy had he known what sanctions awaited the USC football program in June 2010. Carroll told the Los Angeles Times he would not have left the Trojans in January 2010, if he knew what penalties the NCAA was going to impose after it determined Reggie Bush and his family received money and other benefits from sports marketers.

“The truth was, an opportunity came up and it was one I couldn’t turn away from,” Carroll told the Times. “… The NCAA came back at the university … ‘Now we’re going to revisit after five years.’ I had no knowledge that was coming. We thought maybe it wasn’t coming because they didn’t have anything to get us with. It wasn’t five days, it wasn’t five weeks. It was five years. Had we known that that was imminent … I would never have been able to leave under those circumstances. When I look back now, I would have stayed there to do what we needed to do to resolve the problem.”

USC was hit with a two-year bowl ban, lost 30 scholarships over three years, and had to vacate its 2004 national championship and all 12 wins in 2005. Carroll, who led USC to six BCS bowl game victories, said in 2010 that he “never thought there were any facts that supported significant sanctions.” Prior to this year’s Super Bowl, Carroll said the criticism over his perceived abandoning of USC was unfair. “It does bother me because it’s not right and it’s not accurate,” Carroll said. “… I didn’t feel bad about leaving at all. I didn’t feel bad about it because I knew what the truth was.”

I’ll tell you what, I respect the hell out of Pete Carroll for somehow believing the most ridiculous lie in the history of lies. If you had known USC would receive NCAA sanctions and been in the toilet for 3 seasons you would have stayed? Hey Pete, we may be dumb but we’re not stupid. First of all, you did know there was a shitstorm brewing, why? Because every college coach of a major football program knows everything that goes on at his school. Not some things, EVERYTHING. You’re not a successful coach if you don’t know. Just like with this whole Rashad McCants thing, Roy Williams can say he didn’t know the absolute specifics of what was going on, which may be true, but he knew there was something going on because every coach in the country has a similar setup. Play in the gray areas and give yourself a level of plausible deniability. That’s the name of NCAA coaching these days.

Advertisement

So nice try Pete. We agree on one thing, Seattle was a perfect opportunity that you couldn’t pass up and a large part of that perfect opportunity was being able to run away from impending issues at USC. But yeah, go ahead and tell us you would stay, it’s not like we haven’t seen a million college coaches run at the first sign of trouble or anything.

PS

Also please note, I’m a huge Pete Carroll guy. Love positive charismatic coaches instead of the bland always serious guys. But give me a fucking break Pete, this is complete and utter bullshit.