Southern Cal Trojans – The Carroll Years
Trojan football has been a part of the NCAA since 1888, with the University of Southern California team having consistently been one of the teams to beat. With 11 national titles to the program’s credit, the Trojans have spent much of their history dominating the Pacific 10 Conference in which they compete, while also routinely threatening the national championship picture. Over the last decade, USC has spent much of their time ranked within the very top tier of the vote tabulations that have counted: the Associated Press (AP) and Bowl Championship Series (BCS) polls. Over the course of that decade, the Trojans were led by Coach Pete Carroll, who made a name for both himself and his team with a fast-paced style of offense and hard-nosed defense.
Not the first choice
Oddly enough – given Carroll’s eventual success with the team, there were few people cheering his selection when he was first hired. Much of the disapproval stemmed from the fact that he had spent the better part of the last decade coaching in the NFL, and there were detractors who felt that the adjustment to the college game would prove too much for the man. In fact, the USC coaching selection process involved several unsuccessful attempts to recruit three other coaches first – from Oregon State, Oregon, and the San Diego Chargers. For various reasons, none of the three initial choices accepted the job, leaving Carroll as the best available option. Carroll helped his cause by pursuing the post with vigor, in part due to the fact that his daughter was already attending the University. What makes the selection process even more inexplicable is the fact that the University had, just three short years before, tried unsuccessfully to lure Carroll away from the New England Patriots.
An uneasy transition
Carroll’s USC Trojans team took to the field for the 2001 campaign – and immediately fell on their faces. With only two of seven victories to their credit as the season began, the agonizing over Carroll’s selection grew even more intense. Some in the press even went so far as to refer to his selection as the worst choice in the history of college football. The consensus was that Pete Carroll would prove to be the death of USC football supremacy and the dawn of an extended period of mediocrity. E was, in the minds of many, the bringer of the dark ages.
As usually happens in such instances, the pundits were proved wrong by Carroll and his team’s refusal to accept conventional wisdom. The team bought into the Carroll professional-look system, and began a period of domination the likes of which has seldom been seen before or since. Over the next 74 games, the Trojans would win 67. Those victories would propel them to two wins in the national title game, while ensuring that USC’s position as a premier football team was firmly set in stone. Carroll also managed to lead his team to victory in every Conference Championship between 2003 and 2008.
By then, everyone had forgotten about the early days of his tenure with the team, and even the media began to refer to him as perhaps being the best coaching selection ever made by any team.
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