Southern Cal Trojans – The Carroll Years

The University of Southern California Trojans have been playing college football since 1888, and have been playing winning football for much of that history. Their regular domination of the teams in the Pacific-10 Conference has helped them to win a total of eleven national championships, while being in contention for many others. In addition, the team has been one of the most consistent over the last ten years, and has been a regular recipient of a top ten ranking in the major polls. They have spent much of that time in the top five of the AP and BCS polls. That decade coincided with the tenure of Pete Carroll, who brought a professional style of offense and defense to the college game when he was hired by the Trojans in the year 2000.

The selection

Proving that hindsight is indeed 20/20, Carroll’s initial selection in 2000 as the coach of the USC team was an unwelcome one from the perspective of both fans and alumni alike. Coming as he did from the coaching ranks of the NFL – and not having coached in the college game for more than a decade and a half – there were many who believed that he was simply not the man for the job. However, after first attempting to lure Oregon State’s coach to the team, and then following that up with a failed attempt to acquire the coach from Oregon and an unsuccessful overture to Mike Riley of the San Diego Chargers organization, USC’s athletic department eventually settled for Carroll. To his credit, Pete had never backed away from openly campaigning for the job, which he saw as perfect fit for him and his family. The truly odd thing about the reluctance to hire him is the fact that USC had in fact tried to hire him three years before, but he was unable to leave his job with the Patriots.

A bumpy start

Unfortunately for Carroll, his team’s start to the 2001 season gave every indication that he was going to prove his critics correct. The Trojans only managed two wins in their first seven games, and many fans and alumni immediately began second-guessing his selection to the coaching job. The media piled on, going so far as to call his hire one of the worst selections ever made. Some even predicted that the Carroll era would mark the end of USC’s competitiveness and the start of a steady decline.

What happened instead surprised everyone but Carroll and the players who had come to believe in his system. The Trojans began to win – and refused to stop. They bounced back from that abysmal start and proceeded to win 67 of their next 74 games, dominated their way to two national championships, and re-established the Trojans’ football program as an elite force in the college ranks. In addition, the USC teams under Carroll captured every conference championship from 2003 to 2008.

As you might expect, it didn’t take the pundits long to declare that Pete Carroll had been one of the smartest coaching selections in history – and that they, of course, had known it all along.

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