Pete Carroll Flees as Troy Burns

By Jay Mariotti
http://www.fanhouse.com/staff/jay-mariotti/
1/09/2010 9:05 PM ET

LOS ANGELES -- You've seen Pete Carroll race down the Coliseum sideline like a lunatic, a blur in his cardinal-red jacket and silver-fox hair. Well, this time, he just kept running, through the tunnel and out Figueroa Street all the way to the airport, fleeing the stench of scandal and the malaise of rare failure in his USC football program.

For years, he has been the face of southern California as much as any movie star or rocker or rapper, including those who've stood on his sideline during practices and games, celebrities awestruck by the Carroll-built mystique. But the public-relations messes and alleged improprieties kept piling up -- from whether Reggie Bush was given cash, gifts and a rent-free home for his parents to why Joe McKnight was driving a Land Rover owned by a local businessman who has a Web site registered as "www.4joemcknight.com.'' And when the continuing red flags were accompanied by four losses last season, including a 55-21 pounding by Stanford and a 47-20 thumping by Oregon, the Trojans' reign as a college superpower wobbled like no time in the Carroll era.

So rather than risk probation, a downfall in prestige and the new reality that Stanford's Jim Harbaugh and Oregon's Chip Kelly are the new coaching guns of the Pac-10 Conference, Carroll took a slick little escape hatch Saturday, one he insisted he'd never seek. He caught the first flight out to the NFL, where the Seattle Seahawks were more than happy to give him a five-year, $32.5 million deal to help clean up a team that has won nine games in two years and regressed quickly in Jim Mora Jr.'s lone season as coach. With Los Angeles still years away from gaining a pro franchise, Seattle seems the ideal West Coast fit for Carroll, who can be an instant hero with merely a degree of success while proving he can make it in the pros after being fired as a head coach by New England and the New York Jets.

Yet the way he departs USC is the bigger story in L.A., which shook with earthquake-like tremors as the news spread -- though not like the 6.5-mag quake that struck Saturday near Eureka, Calif. Instead of trying to save his creation as Troy burns around him, Carroll wants no part of the wreckage. I mean, didn't he turn down numerous chances to coach in the NFL, remaining the BMOC in much better times? While it appears Carroll wasn't directly involved in alleged wrongdoing involving the Bush case, the McKnight case and other raging fires, all of this has happened on his watch. And the perception now is that USC is a dirty program perhaps plummeting toward mediocrity, with more Emerald Bowls ahead than Rose Bowls. Whoever the next coach is -- USC alum Jeff Fisher isn't interested, but Oregon State's Mike Riley, Washington's Steve Sarkisian and former Trojan linebacker Jack Del Rio, now coaching the Jacksonville Jaguars, might be -- he'll inherit recruiting uncertainties and a potentially devastating Bush crisis that has been probed by the NCAA for three years. Sure, USC still has sunshine, dance girls, Will Ferrell, Snoop Dogg and a legacy of 11 national championships, seven Heisman Trophies and numerous pompous fight songs. But no Carroll means the end of the Hollywood era at USC, where Bush, Matt Leinart and other star Trojans not only were the biggest men on campus but some of the biggest on the Sunset Strip, including the apartments of Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton.

The way this deal went down is wrong on many levels. Along with the coaching reins in Seattle, Carroll wanted complete control over football operations -- and it appeared he would have all the power he desired on Friday night with the team presidency and coaching positions. But the Seahawks screwed up when they offered the package to Carroll before interviewing a minority candidate, which is required according to the NFL's Rooney Rule. Seahawks CEO Tod Leiweke lined up a Saturday morning interview in Minnesota with Vikings defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, but the visit reeked of tokenism so the Carroll hiring could be announced quickly. Not only that, when the watchdog group known as the Fritz Pollard Alliance got wind of Carroll's double duty, it lodged a protest with the league and threatened not to allow Frazier to interview with Leiweke.

It seems the Seahawks violated the Rooney Rule on two counts: hiring Carroll for two positions without first interviewing a minority candidate for either job. John Wooten, chairman of the Pollard Alliance, told the Los Angeles Times that he would object to the hire unless the Seahawks assured that Carroll only would be the head coach. As the day progressed, Leiweke let it be known that Carroll would be hired as the head coach only. You can blame Pollard for costing Carroll the complete control he always has craved on the NFL level -- he had very little power over personnel decisions in his previous two pro jobs -- but Leiweke was the one who should have lined up the requisite minority candidates before granting Carroll his full control. Now, the Seahawks will have to hire a general manager, which could delay the announcement and create an instant soap opera between Carroll and his GM.

"Our position is, if Pete Carroll comes there as the head coach, he will only be in charge of the 53-man roster," Wooten told the Times. "That's the extent of his authority. Because of their commitment to swear that to us, we have agreed to let them interview Leslie Frazier. They can hire Pete Carroll if they want. But he cannot be anything more than a head coach. He does not have control of the draft. He does not have control of the trades. He does not have the last word on anything other than the 53 men he puts out on that field each and every week.

"If there's any violation of anything else, you can rest assured -- and I've already alerted the NFL office on this -- it would mean that Tod Leiweke would have been dishonest with us and would have violated the Rooney Rule."

That's called throwing one's weight around. And given some of the dreadful abuses in interviewing token candidates who have no chance to be hired by teams, it's productive for Wooten to call out a franchise that wasn't playing entirely by the rules.

USC hasn't been playing by the rules, either. The football program, which produced $35 million in revenue during its last 12-month fiscal period, has struck me as the closest facsimile to pro ball without actually being in the NFL. With the Bush investigation comes the possibility that the lid will be blown off Carroll's program, just as the NCAA exposed wrongdoing in USC's basketball program. The place looks like a bloated, loose and reckless athletic factory when the football and basketball programs are probed simultaneously, with the charges involving two premier athletes in Bush and O.J. Mayo. When the university punished itself last week for charges that Mayo took cash and gifts from an L.A. promoter named Rodney Guillory -- Mayo denies any wrongdoing -- it was viewed in some quarters as a preemptive strike in trying to lessen NCAA sanctions in both the basketball and football programs. But Carroll's swift departure, which came the same day that McKnight and star receiver Damian Williams declared they will enter this April's draft, suggests the walls are about to tumble down

"When we've done something wrong, we have an obligation to do something about it and that is exactly what we are doing here,'' said Mike Garrett, the USC athletic director.

Tim Floyd, the former basketball coach, was run out of his job after foolishly doing business with a shady middleman, Guillory, during the Mayo courtship. Oddly, Floyd ripped Garrett a few weeks ago for not showing him enough loyalty through the Mayo mess. In fact, Garrett was distancing himself from a scandal and trying to cover his rear end. In recent days, USC people said Garrett was keeping the same distance from Carroll. "Mike's reputation took precedence,'' Floyd told the Times. "All loyalty, all support disappeared.''

Yet wasn't Floyd the cheater here, the one who allowed Guillory to walk into his office off the street and sell the Mayo experience?

Amid the madness, Pete Carroll has decided to dodge it all and start a new life. How curious that the move comes on the day when Mark Sanchez -- the quarterback who wasn't ready for the NFL, according to a now-embarrassed Carroll -- won a playoff game for the Jets. He'll have more success in Seattle than he did in New England and New York, perhaps instantly in the soft NFC West, where he'll eventually need a young quarterback -- Jimmy Clausen? -- to replace the battered Matt Hasselbeck. But Carroll will be most remembered for the two national titles, the 97-19 record, the seven consecutive Pac-10 titles and the colossus he built just off the freeway on the fringes of downtown L.A.

In the end, it was a colossus he couldn't wait to flee as the flames began to scald him.