The most absurd headline of the year comes from a major news source (The Sporting News) and a writer I frequently agree with, Mike Florio: “Pete Carroll Should Lose His Job.” In the wake of the NCAA findings that USC will be severely punished for its blatant and numerous rules violations, Florio reaches the conclusion that the man at the helm of this collegiate football scandal should lose his new pro-football job. While sharing his sentiment, “fairness dictates that a consequence apply,” I think Carroll will always carry the consequence with him as an invisible badge of shame worn beneath his warm, wry smile.
The shame is shared by Bill Belichick each time he is looked upon or coached against. For those in the know, we don’t look at him or other notorious cheaters the same way again. It is a scarlet letter, though invisible to the uninformed and therefore irrelevant, emblazoned on the hearts and minds of those who matter most, the fans. For the perpetrators of the offenses, the people they most want to impress (their peers), know best how their conspiratorial acts have effected not just the outcome of games in which they competed, but even the storylines of their own careers.
Disgraceful acts are not what is presently at issue. Calling for Pete Carroll’s firing from a completely different level of football is akin to telling an institution of higher learning that it should dismiss a student found cheating on high school exams. Especially when the institution had every reason to suspect the student had cheated. Admission of such a student would rightly raise eyebrows, but it is ultimately up to the institution to do what they please — especially having advanced knowledge of likely indiscretions. One is free to question the admitting institution for displaying poor judgment, but not the one being admitted.
The Seattle Seahawks knew what they were getting with Pete Carroll. They knew why he was NOW interested in a return to professional coaching. Those of us who live in southern California KNEW about the severity of the allegations and subsequent scrutiny USC’s program was under. When asked about Carol’s hiring by the Seahawks back in January, those close to college football and/or USC knew that the guillotine was about to fall on the University and that said guillotine would fall soon. The real question should be what took the NCAA so long to complete its investigation?
It is terribly unfortunate that present athletes and fans should be punished so severely for something that took place so long ago. The questions surrounding Reggie Bush and several other players were numerous and frequent. One would have to be expert at self-deception to believe that the perennial Pac-10 champions were doing everything honestly and above board. It was clear that there were significant and numerous NCAA violations going on for many years. Yes, evidence was necessary to bring charges and the subsequent sanctions — but nearly five years after the end of their 34 game wining streak and consecutive national championships?!? Certainly the investigative process could have been carried out in a more timely manner.
The Seahawks knew what they were getting when they hired Pete Carroll and just like an institution of higher learning who might accept a known cheat to its hallowed halls, the risks are weighed against hopes for great things. How many people line up daily to work with Martha Stewart despite her having been incarcerated for securities fraud? The queue is deep because people want to be around winners and will sacrifice some level of personal or organizational reputation to win. The onus is on the people who chose to sacrifice some of their own integrity by hiring people who are highly likely to find themselves above the law.
To Florio, I respectfully disagree: Pete Carroll should not be fired as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. It was the Seahawks organization who knowingly hired a man with low regard for the NCAA rules which were to have governed his prior employment. It was their call. All questions regarding the appropriateness and/or wisdom of Carroll’s hiring are perfectly fair, welcome, and where the debate is most relevant.
I think te NCAA rules are unethical and border slavery. the fact that these players who are why fans turn up to college games can make absolutley nothing is disgusting. Just a gift can ruin a players entire career. The NFL is suffering from rookie contracts because of the NCAA.
The NCAA should not have the to prevent college players earning, the fact that it is dishing out punishment to UCS after both Bush and Carrol are gone is just wrong. Players who are on the program are now in limbo after they were recruited by Carrol.
How else can you punish USC. What can the NCAA do to Bush. Pete Carroll got out as he knew the hammer was comming down on USC. I think the NCAA should do to Carroll what they did to Kelvin Sampson of Oklahoma and Indiana and make it very hard for him to get hired to coach college again.
If you think the college players should get paid, then should they get paid as much as Bush got paid. USC legally paying Reggie Bush would not have done a thing as his parents had free rent and Reggie can a free car, etc. By the way Reggie did get paid probably around $30,000 – $45,000 a year in free education and let us not forget the free food coming from the training table. Paying athletes like Bush would not have changed a thing as he would have wanted more and also Title 9 would have forced the women’s track team to get paid also, and there is no way athletes from non revenue sports should get a dime.
I really hope they vacate Reggie’s Heisman. Cheaters do not win and good riddences to the cheaters in Carrol and Bush. Also Athletic Director Mike Garrert, hopefully you will get fired in the same clASSy way as you fired John Robinson, by leaving a message on his answering machine.
I was surprised that Pete Carroll wasn’t given a “show cause” penalty out of this. Perhaps he did, and it just wasn’t mentioned in the media (but that’s unlikely, as that is usually big news). A “show cause” is a personal penalty the NCAA imposes on an individual coach who has shown flagrant disregard for NCAA rules. A coach with a “show cause” cannot be hired by any NCAA institution for a set period of time (usually 3-5 years). Any school that wishes to hire a coach with a “show cause” has to have a hearing with the NCAA and make a case for how they will ensure the coach will not cheat while serving as coach of their institution. (Think of it as probation for an individual coach). Granted that wouldn’t seem to matter at the moment as Pete Carroll begins his latest stint in the NFL, but if 2 or 3 years down the road it isn’t working out in Seattle, there is nothing preventing Carroll from returning to another head coaching gig in the NCAA. And lest anyone out there think AD’s would think twice about hiring him after what has happened at USC, understand that there are plenty of schools out there that want to win and will take any chance to do so.
USC’s violations went beyond the football field and the shear flagrance of their violations necessitated severe punishment to get the Athletic Department to recognize that they need to at least pretend they follow the rules. This wasn’t just about football. The basketball program (thanks OJ Mayo) as well as other sports programs were involved in the investigation. Also, the fact that journalists had turned almost everything up and the scandals were public knowledge meant that the NCAA HAD to act. Alabama and the University of Miami both recovered from sanctions and won titles within a decade of harsh NCAA sanctions. Who better to help USC get back on top than a crew of USC retreads who actually were on staff when this was all going on.
As for Pete Carrol, the Seahawks either didn’t feel that his at that time “alleged” past transgressions were meritorious of immediate disqualification from consideration, or they were completely ignorant of the allegations. In either case, firing Carrol at this point would simply make Seattle look more incompetent. If the NCAA wanted to stick it to Pete, they’d have their legal team working on the legality of a set of sanctions that would apply to whatever college team that wants to hire him in the instance of his 3rd NFL head coaching gig ending poorly. The could take some sore of action to make it clear that they are wise to his shenanigans and that any college program that hires him is under immediate suspicion of abandoning ethical behavior in pursuit of ill-gotten glory. I’m not entirely familiar with the governing documents of the NCAA, but such sanctions that follow coaches and punish them would help do something about the scorched earth career paths of coaches with continual recruitment violations in both football and basketball.
Reggie Bush’s mediocre career to date (individually at least) would seem to be punishment enough, as Florio suggests. But really, that’s not enough if the NCAA wants to send a message. Of course barring his, and other alleged contributors, from having contact with USC athletics should be a given. The Heisman should be vacated, as he was no longer an amateur by definition, though no revote should be cast as it is impossible to do it all over fairly given the outside knowledge (the pro careers of the nominees) that voters now possess.
As for paying players, that is an issue that should continue to be discussed given the increasing value of the dollar amounts athletic programs bring to schools. Money is tearing college rivalries apart and at some point the NCAA needs to get serious about this debate. One thing needs to be noted, however. Nothing is more unjust than the equal treatment of un-equals. That is to mean that you should not pay a 4th year senior starting tailback the same as a redshirt freshmen. Any form of payment system should be based upon playing time earned, not just participation on the team or attendance at practice. If you want to make it like the real world, then make it a meritocracy like a real job. Perform and you will be rewarded, if you try and try and find out that you’re nothing more than a 3rd string QB then take your pay and live with it or find something else to do. As for how such a program applies to other programs at a school, tie it to the relative revenue generated. The reason this is more often discussed with football is simply because college football is the NFL’s developmental league whereas the other major sports have their own form of developmental leagues or take in players much earlier than the NFL and NFLPA allow. I think that’s enough for now.
While I agree that someone needs to be punished for USC’s violations, I don’t agree with paying college athletes a tradition salary or wage. These athletes usually get full
ride scholarships and a free college education, something which would cost the normal student tens-of-thousand and sometimes hundreds-of-thousands of dollars. Getting to play a sport you supposedly love to avoid having multiple thousands of dollars of debt is hardly what I’d call borderline slavery.
How good Pete Carroll’s record with USC would have been had he not (along with the rest of the USC management) bent the rules so heavily? Just makes you wonder how good a coach he really is on even terms…
Why did u have to bring up the bill b thing, Jeff?
You also have to remember, this was not just about Reggie Bush – it was also about OJ Mayo (baskeball) and I think some tennis athletes. The punishment is harsh because the violations were so flagrant.
What gets me, is how Pete Carroll could stand there and with a straight face say, I never thought they would impose sanctions like this. Seriously, Pete? If you never thought that, you would not have bailed. I think Pete saw the writing on the wall and left before he too sank with the ship!
“Fragrant” – It’s smelly?
On a different note, either Yusuf’s idea of what slavery was, is extremely misguided, or he is talking WAY over the top. They do get paid, they get tuition, room, and food at the very least, and sometime a small amount of weekly spending cash, if they put there mind to it, that tuition gives the an excellent education and could set you up for the rest of your life, even after football, see Myron Rolle.
I do wish that the penalties for these actions would follow the coaches to their next job, but it might need to be written in the contract of the coaches. Something like a ethics clause in the contract that explicitly lays out the penalties and backlash of breaking the NCAA rules. If they wrote in something like that the coach would have to repay all salary, for the years of the infractions, and a fraction of their signing bonus if it is found that they committed major NCAA violations, that might be enough to stop this behavior. So Pete would owe USC roughly 8.8 million dollars plus some of his signing bonus for the 2 years that the NCAA found issues in how Bush was treated.
Look, I think that just like Mike Vick, Pete Carroll is a waste of talent. I mean, Michael Vick is a great qb, but the shooting at his birthday party a couple of days ago shows that he isn’t a great person (he wasnt the one shooting people, but he was chillin with people from the dogfighting ring, and he isnt allowed to do that anymore).
Pete Carroll went 97-19 in his career as an NCAA coach. But his rule infractions have cost the school greatly. I do think that it is a little unfair to the students who can’t recieve scholarships from USC, but the NCAA did what they thought they had to do.
Personally, I believe that the punishment should either carry to his next coaching job or just ban him from football. Because he has shown that he isn’t trustworthy, he’ll break your rules, and he’ll try to make excuses. And if the truth is found out, he’ll bail on the team, possibly leaving them to take the punishment and the blame.
I think it is sad that people like Pete Carroll and Mike Vick and Big Ben are the way they are. I think of it as a waste of talent. It bothers me that you can be that kind of a person, ESPECIALLY when you work for the NCAA/NFL and you know that little kids look up to you.
What a waste….
Perhaps Pete Carroll is a bit scummy, but America is all about winning without going to jail.
Until he’s in jail, or at least proven guilty of something, then he’s a winner. And I look forward to seeing Pete Carroll run his NFL football program.
If you want to blame someone, blame NCAA for such shoddy enforcement of their own rules. This is obviously an area with extemely high incentives to break the rules. Therefore, commensurate levels of detection and enforcement should be put in place by the NCAA.
It’s disgraceful that such rule violations were allowed to go on for so long. It’s like the NFL allowing Cushing to play despite having positive drug tests before the season began.
People cheat. Our politicians lie, cheat, steal, and are responsible for the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of people every year. Our corporate executives ROB us blind and ruin our environment while padding their pockets with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year. A little perspective please on the whole Pete Carroll issue?
Nice article Jeff. Carroll should not lose his current NFL job, but if he were to return to college sports, he should face some ramifications at that time.