Arash Markazi, ESPN Senior Writer 10y

Pete Carroll, architect of USC golden age, not to blame for Trojans' downfall

LOS ANGELES -- The reaction was as subdued as the introduction.

During halftime of Saturday's USC-Oregon State game, Pete Carroll's name was quickly read along with the seven other USC Hall of Fame inductees who were unable to the game. It was so quick that the response when his name briefly echoed throughout the Coliseum was nonexistent.

Carroll wasn't on the field for the halftime ceremony, but nothing should be read into that. Carroll had always planned to spend the Seattle Seahawks' bye week in Miami with his son, Brennan, who is an assistant coach for the Miami Hurricanes, daughter-in-law, Amber, and grandchildren, Dillon and Colbie.

Throughout Carroll's coaching career, he has always dedicated bye weeks to his children, and this was the one chance he was going to get to see his son and grandchildren, who are 3 and 1, for six months.

Carroll had been told the halftime ceremony for the 16 inductees would be brief and slightly rushed with the late kickoff and he had already committed to attending the formal induction ceremony on campus in May. Each inductee ended up getting about a 20-second introduction for the six-minute, on-field ceremony.

If his son were a quarterback in the game (as was the case with Jack Del Rio, a fellow 2015 Hall of Fame inductee, whose son Luke is a backup quarterback with the Beavers), he would have been there.

Whatever ill will that existed between Carroll and USC fans after the coach's departure five months before the school was hit with crippling sanctions has long since faded away.

He recorded a congratulatory message for Matt Barkley for breaking the school and conference passing record two years ago that was played inside the Coliseum and got a standing ovation that was louder than any following a Barkley pass that day.

Six months ago, after winning the Super Bowl, he spoke on campus during a standing room-only event at Bovard Auditorium at which he received multiple standing ovations and was joined by Will Ferrell and first-year Trojans coach Steve Sarkisian.

And eight months from now when he's back at USC to be inducted into the school's athletic Hall of Fame, he will be received just as warmly as he was then.

It's understandable why some USC fans would have been upset at Carroll for leaving the program when he did. It looked like a captain fleeing a sinking ship before it capsized, but the truth is he had no idea the sanctions were coming or that they would be as severe as they were.

It’s hard to fully buy that he would have turned down the Seattle job and stayed at USC if he had known about the sanctions, as he has since said, but there's no question he had no idea the sanctions would be as harsh as they were. No one did. Most within the program thought they'd get off without so much as a slap on the wrist. Call it arrogance or stupidity or a combination of both, but everyone was blindsided when the sanctions came down, including Carroll.

Anyone who knew Carroll knew he was always destined to go back to the NFL at some point. After winning back-to-back national championships and leading USC to seven straight conference titles, BCS bowl games, 11-win seasons and AP top-four finishes, the NFL was really the last challenge left for the coach who constantly preaches about competition. He had turned around a USC program coming off a last-place conference finish with Paul Hackett and hadn't won a national championship in 25 years. There was nothing left for him to prove.

He was just waiting for the right opportunity -- an owner with deep pockets willing to hand him the keys to a franchise with state-of-the-art facilities and a long-term, guaranteed deal. He got all of that and more with Seattle and has built the Seahawks into Super Bowl champions with a coaching staff littered with former USC assistants and a roster with plenty of Trojans as well. Former USC and current Seattle linebackers Malcolm Smith -- who was named Super Bowl MVP -- and Mike Morgan led USC onto the field before the game against Oregon State.

Time has a way of healing most wounds, but in the case of Carroll at USC, it wasn't so much a wound that needed healing but a misunderstanding that needed to be understood. Carroll was never the bad guy in the sanctions levied against USC. If time has taught us anything, it's that the NCAA was really to blame for the crippling sanctions.

Sure, Reggie Bush was at fault, and, clearly, Carroll should have been more vigilant, but nothing in the NCAA’s 67-page report would defend a two-year bowl ban, four-year probation and the loss of 30 scholarships over three seasons. You would have to combine the NCAA sanctions against Miami, Ohio State and North Carolina to reach the level on which USC was hit. Not even the NCAA’s borderline "death penalty" against Penn State for the Jerry Sandusky scandal ended up reaching USC's level of punishment.

The NCAA's inability to govern and fairly distribute punishment in a consistent fashion has even made Bush a sympathetic figure to some. Nearly a decade after his transgressions as a 20-year old student, the NCAA says USC must forever dissociate itself from him, even if he apologizes and wants to make amends. Even Chris Webber's disassociation from Michigan for his violations was given a time limit, and he is now able to attend games again. Bush is essentially serving a life sentence for a similar crime.

No one is perfect, but Carroll’s time at USC was as close as USC fans have felt to perfection. It's a feeling they won't soon forget and one the athletic department clearly refuses to let go of, as evidenced by the three former Carroll assistants who have followed him as head coach. The sanctions will forever be asterisks in USC's record books, but the further we are removed from the sanctions, the smaller the asterisks become, as we remember the Carroll era for what it was rather than how it ended.

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