Is Pete Carroll leaving USC???

[stomperrob]

Rumors are he's heading back to the NFL to coach the Cardinals (why would anyone want that job). Frankly I think he'd be crazy to go back to the NFL - why risk failure again and tarnish your reputation - stay where you are and retire a great college coach some day.

Open letter to Pete Carroll: Forget NFL and Arizona desert
Dec. 5, 2006
By Dennis Dodd
CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer

LOS ANGELES -- Please don't go, Pete Carroll. We need you.

If the whispers are true that Saturday was your last regular-season game as USC's coach, then you're inhaling something other than L.A. smog.

Aside from the final score against UCLA, Saturday was perfect. The climate matched his team's play for most of the last four years -- both were national championship caliber.

This is the first December since 2002 that Carroll and the Trojans are not preparing for a shot at No. 1. UCLA took back the city for a day with a 13-9 victory.

So is that enough to push Carroll out the door? Is USC's Camelot crumbling? Is this the sign Carroll needed to push him to the No Fun League?

Carroll kind of played footsie last week with the idea, wondering out loud about the NFL's advantages. His former quarterback Matt Leinart caught a whiff and said, sure, Pete would be perfect for the Arizona Cardinals.

Pete Carroll might be perfect for a lot of things, including the NFL, but someone needs to check. Are the Cardinals still in the NFL? Arizona is the home of the most stupefying, achingly mediocre franchise in pro sports. Relocating it from St. Louis to the desert in 1988 only provided a lower humidity reading when the team stunk.

Forgive Leinart. He's just a kid. He doesn't know what horrors await him. The Bidwill family has owned the Cardinals for 74 years. There have been six playoff appearances since 1947, none since 1998.

The franchise left St. Louis because Billy Bidwill said fans weren't supporting the team. False and false. The Cardinals played to 87 percent capacity at old Busch Stadium their last lame-duck year.

Those people were either ignorant to the situation or bored. The Bidwills didn't give fans a reason to come out. This was a franchise that drafted a kicker (John Lee) in the second round. This was a franchise that once fired coach Jim Hanifan, who found out at halftime of the season finale in 1985. The locks had been changed per Bidwill's orders.

This is a franchise that came to the desert for an attendance boost and then saw crowds shrink to 25,000 or so -- unless the Cowboys or Bears were in town.

Apparently, snowbirds don't like losing either.

Pete, if you're aching for a new challenge, the Cardinals ain't it. The smart money says, if you ever go, it will be if/when the NFL moves a team to Southern California. That makes sense.

But you're throwing your career away if you go to Arizona. Ego trumps all at times. Carroll has a huge one, which makes him no different than a lot of his peers. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wants to add some sizzle to the franchise. The Super Bowl comes to Phoenix in 2008. What if the Cardinals played the first home game in Super Bowl history?

A snowstorm hitting the Valley of the Sun is more likely.

Turning around the Trojans was like changing the oil in the car. Turning around the Cardinals would be like planning the first manned flight to Mars.

Pete, we know your days might be numbered at Troy. We've been told that you are concerned about the NCAA. Not so much in the Reggie Bush case, but because of the temptations that are around every corner in La-La Land.

You can recruit your behind off, but maybe you're thinking that sooner or later a scandal is going to bring everything down.

But did you gaze up at the San Gabriels for a moment during that loss to UCLA? Only the Song Girls were more beautiful.

How many coaches can get a sunburn in the first week of December? While the rest of the country was digging out of snow, it somehow stayed below 80 degrees on one of L.A.'s great sports Saturdays.

USC-UCLA.

Lakers-Clippers.

Ducks-Kings.

Out at Santa Monica Beach, Eric Gagne was building sandcastles. We don't make this up. It was some kind of promotional thing with the Lakers' Jordan Farmar.

Pete, did you feel the love? This is your team, your time, your town. A return trip to the Rose Bowl in less than a month isn't a bad consolation prize.

And this was a rebuilding year.

Do you really want to leave all of it behind?

Please don't go, Pete. I buried the lead, but this is a selfish column. We, the sporting press, need you. The best reason: You helped simplify the BCS. With USC playing in championship games, that eliminated one half of a headache.

You're colorful, you're cooperative. You get it. You realize football isn't some dark, mystical science, it's our national obsession. You're one of us, a fan, one of the guys.

You're the anti-Nick Saban.

There are better things to do to than coaching 13-10 snorefests on Sunday afternoons.

Better things like blowing out UCLA on Saturday afternoons.

Just wait until next year.

[knapplc]

Hmmm.... stay a coach at an established school with recruiting pipelines all across the nation, in a BCS conference that really has only one or two decent teams to give you any competition year in and year out, where you get paid well and where you are genuinely appreciated - OR - go back to the NFL to a really, really bad franchise, where you are not in control of your organization like you are now, where you really haven't had a lot of success and where you will most likely be out of a job in three or four years.

I don't really think the choice is all that difficult for Mr. Carroll. I highly doubt he leaves USC any time soon, if ever.

[deerayfan072]

Pete would be an idiot to leave. He is a great College coach, but NFL....Not so much. He can stay create a dynasty, be one of the all time wininigest coaches and be known for that, why leave?

[A Fleshner Fantasy]

I don't know why he would leave...he has such a good thing going at USC.

[HskrPwr13]

I woundt leave USC if I were him, but...................

Never underestimate a man's ego. Especially one of a head football coach. He'll get paid more $, he has a good young team with HIS qb that isnt as bad as they were managed, he would probably be the coach/GM, and finally he could be the guy that turned around a woeful franchise and thumb his nose and the others that wouldnt give him a shot earlier or dismissed him after his first stint.

[eman]

He won't leave.

[ShoelessJoe]

Never underestimate a man's ego. Especially one of a head football coach. He'll get paid more $, he has a good young team with HIS qb that isnt as bad as they were managed, he would probably be the coach/GM, and finally he could be the guy that turned around a woeful franchise and thumb his nose and the others that wouldnt give him a shot earlier or dismissed him after his first stint.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Everybody has an ego. Whether it's Spurrier leaving Florida to test his system in the NFL or his coming back to college after the NFL to prove that his system still works these coaches are extremely competitive and if you think they can just take a failure (like Carroll's NFL career was) and move on then you are mistaken.

[Kilroy]

Never underestimate a man's ego. Especially one of a head football coach. He'll get paid more $, he has a good young team with HIS qb that isnt as bad as they were managed, he would probably be the coach/GM, and finally he could be the guy that turned around a woeful franchise and thumb his nose and the others that wouldnt give him a shot earlier or dismissed him after his first stint.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Everybody has an ego. Whether it's Spurrier leaving Florida to test his system in the NFL or his coming back to college after the NFL to prove that his system still works these coaches are extremely competitive and if you think they can just take a failure (like Carroll's NFL career was) and move on then you are mistaken.

I think calling his NFL Coaching career a "failure" is a bit of a stretch. (33-31 with a division title and two playoff appearances)

That said, he'd be nuts to leave USC (where he's the BMOC) for the nightmare that is the Cardinals. The rumor's all over the place here in the Valley of the Sun, but I think that's all it is...a rumor.

You'd have to think it would take a boatload of money and personnel control for him to even seriously consider it, and even then you'd hope he'd have enough sense to say "no thanks".