Dylan Hernandez: Carroll’s an enemy now but Trojans fans will cut him slack
“Had I known what was going on and what was going to come around, I never would have been able to leave,” Carroll said on a conference call.
You wanted to believe him. You really did.
The absence of major championships this decade has reminded Los Angeles of how special Carroll’s USC teams were. The Lakers last won in 2010. The Dodgers are closing in on the three-decade anniversary of their most recent World Series crown.
And that was only part of it. Carroll wasn’t the stereotypical no-nonsense football coach; he looked as if he enjoyed himself as he won a couple of national championships in his nine seasons at USC. He was fun. He made you laugh. He was one of the city’s last rock-star coaches; Phil Jackson was the other.
Which is why Carroll is expected to receive a warm welcome back when he returns to the Coliseum on Sunday as the coach of the Seattle Seahawks. Still, questions remain and there’s really nothing anyone can say or do at this point to make them vanish. The questions provide an unsatisfactory ending to a story that otherwise reads like a fairy tale, about a charismatic and community-minded coach who defied the odds by building a dynasty in an era of parity.
Carroll has always maintained that he and the university knew nothing about the improper benefits Reggie Bush received while playing for the Trojans. And he reiterated this week that he didn’t leave USC in 2010 because he knew the school was on the verge of crippling sanctions delivered by the NCAA.
“I was already gone by the time all of that stuff came out,” Carroll said. “I felt bad about that.
“That’s not the way this thing came down. I know there’s a lot of people who have different opinions about that because they don’t know.”
Carroll pointed a finger at the NCAA, saying college sports’ governing body imposed unfair penalties, which included the loss of 30 scholarships. The Trojans were also subjected to a two-year bowl ban.
The program emerged from probation in 2014, but hasn’t completely recovered. When the Trojans played their home opener last week, the Coliseum was half empty. The empty rows of seats offered evidence of the lasting effects of the sanctions, and also served as a reminder of the special atmosphere Carroll created while he was there.
That’s how USC has decided to remember him.
“The people he brought in are legendary,” Trojans coach Clay Helton said. “I think of the Matt Leinarts and the quarterbacks and the skill players and the linebackers. He built something really special.”
The NCAA sanctions? The USC community isn’t holding that against Carroll.
Carroll made it easy for the university to embrace him. While he was at USC, he founded A Better LA, a nonprofit that works to eliminate gang violence. He continues to speak fondly about the nine years he spent at the school.
He talked about a 27-0 victory over UCLA at the Coliseum in 2001, his first season. The game drew an announced crowd of 88,588 fans.
“The first UCLA game that we played at night was the first time that the Coliseum really filled up and everybody was there,” Carroll said. “It was being in the midst of the crowd and atmosphere that I kind of hoped it would be. It took a while during that season to get people coming, but obviously the UCLA-SC game draws a great crowd and that was kind of the start of the big enthusiasm, the big excitement about being at the Coliseum, I thought.”
It’s a nice story, isn’t it? If only it had a more fitting ending.