Before we get into some thoughts surrounding Pete Carroll's move to the NFL let's take a look a few of his quotes surrounding the move."Not in any way," Carroll told the newspaper. "Because I know where we stand. It's just a process we have to go through. We know we've fought hard to do right."
"But it came out of nowhere," he told the Times.
"I've given everything I've had," he said. "There was never going to be a good time." [ESPN]
I think we can all agree to calling bullshit to some level on Pete Carroll. The idea that the investigation on USC which could force them to lose scholarships, forfeit victories, and make USC bowl ineligible had absolutely no influence on his decision to leave USC is laughable. Of course it had an influence, so to did the likely pay increase and so did whatever his desire was to prove himself on the NFL stage.
The result of this move simply seems bad for all parties. Pete Carroll is leaving a cushy job where he gets 37 5 star recruits each season and has a skill edge over every single opponent for an NFL job where the team is ready to go into rebuilding mode. The Seahawks are a ways away from being an NFL title conteder again. They've been surpassed in the division by both the Cardinals and 49ers. They have an aging Quarterback and while they have decent draft picks to work with this season I doubt they will be playoff ready in the next few seasons. So if this is the case, Carroll will essentially be the same as he was in his prior run as an NFL coach, just another middle of the pack coach instead of one of the top five college coaches in the country.
For USC this could be a make or break moment for their program. Pete Carroll reinvigerated the program. He morphed it into the place for College Stars to play. He grabbed the #1 quarterback in the country basically every year this decade. A new coach has a great base to work with and maybe the program is too strong right now to fuck up, think Dennis Erickson at Miami, but USC needs to make sure they grab a guy that did what Pete Carroll did and that certainly is not a guarantee.
Simply stated, Pete Carroll moving to Seattle seems like one of the rare instances where everybody will lose.
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