The Great Debate: Pete Carroll Cont'd  

Some good points by Frazier, BUT.....

• The fact that Carroll has had such an easy time bringing in recruits from all over the country further cements my point. Not only does USC have an amazing recruiting base in Southern California, but it has just about the most desirable locatin and facilities of any school in the country. How hard could it possibly be to sell 18 year old kids on coming to USC and enjoying beautiful weather and beautiful women 365 days a year. That OJ Mayo decided to come to USC over other schools was for this reason, not Pete Carroll.
• The fact that USC went 37-35 before Carroll is irrelevant. The crux of my argument is that USC is such a friendly situation for a coach that any competent coach should be able succeed. I am not claiming that Carroll is incompetent, I am just claiming that his success has been inflated by the situation. Now a 37-35 record at USC, THAT is incompetence.
• I will concede that Carroll takes his team on the road every year to face a BCS foe, and this is impressive. However, let's not ignore the real reason he does this: his conference stinks!!! Yes USC has looked great in early season victories over Auburn, Arkansas and Virginia Tech recently, but the reason Carroll schedules those games (and the likes of Notre Dame and Fresno State for that matter) is because the Pac-10 ain't what it used to be. For the past 6 years the college football world has been owned by the SEC and the Big 12. The Pac-10, while better than it's given credit for, just hasn't been one of the elite conferences. California is pretty good, but they always show their true colors against the SEC (e.g. getting whooped on by Tennessee) or the Big 12 (e.g. Texas Tech dropping about 50 on them in the bowl game). Oregon is a superfraud every year, UCLA can't ever get their act together, and the Arizona schools are perrenial underachievers. If Carroll doesn't schedule those out of conference games, he runs the risk of one loss ending his BCS championship aspirations. To be fair Carroll is willing to go on the road every year, but the overall mediocrity of the Pac-10 during his tenure has made things a lot easier on him.
• Who the hell was Lane Kiffin before Carroll took over? Who the hell was Pete Carroll before he hooked up with Kiffin and Chow? As Pats fans we know exactly who he was: a laid back, defensive minded, stick up his ass on offense coach. His Trojan teams have been anything but that. While Kiffin certainly helped his own career by joining USC, the point I was making is that Kiffin and Chow are both in the NFL now. This means they have coaching talent! You think maybe it's possible that Carroll benefited from that? This isn't a chicken or the egg argument. It doesn't matter whether Kiffin and Chow were great before they met Carroll or whether they learned under him. The bottom line is that Carroll has had two of the top offensive minds in the college game calling plays for him the past 6 years (not to mention Steve Sarkisian who falls into that category).
  
• Carson Palmer may have been a disappointment before Pete Carroll, but there is no way you can argue that Carroll would be enjoying this level of success had Palmer not turned in his magical season as a senior. Carroll didn't have anything to do with that. He inherited the greatest QB in the history of USC, and that is was vaulted him to his super coach status.
• When players make bonehead plays (i.e. Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart throwing an INT in the endzone, etc.) it reflects poorly on the coach. If a coach isn't supposed to prevent boneheaded plays, then what the hell is he supposed to do. Undiscipline is the hallmark of a poorly coached team. Mack Brown had Vince Young to make plays for him. Pete Carroll had Reggie Bush. Mack Brown won the game because his players made fewer boneheaded plays. It may not have been a coaching clinic, but Mack Brown outcoached Petey in that one.