End of the Pete Carroll Era
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

Pete because taught me how to understand and love football.

What else is there to say? Sportswriters are having a field day with USC, USC coaching changes, USC NCAA infractions and so forth. My alma mater has hit the dark ages. It will be sometime before we will be heralded as the pristine and elite football/athletic program that it once was. But I still have mad respect; after all, it was under the Pete Carroll regime that I first became interested in football in the first place.

My earliest memories of football are of when my dad would watch the San Francisco 49ers on TV. I would look on, see a bunch of men running around the field in a seemingly chaotic manner, and decide that this sport wasn’t for me. I couldn’t make order out of the chaos. The intricacies of the game were above me.

And yet I grew up on the east coast when the New England Patriots were the best team in the NFL. And I still was disinterested. Sure, I would catch the Super Bowl, but only for the atmosphere, the bandwagoning and the mass amounts of junk food, specifically potato chips and dip. Still, there was little to no interest. Football players in high school all seemed like cocky meatheads and my high school team wasn’t even that good.

I ended up going to USC for my undergraduate study. College football is a huge part of the culture there. The football program was finally on the up and up. The year I started at USC was the second year of the Pete Carroll turnaround and the whole campus was buzzing with Trojan fervor. It was only a matter of time before I got swept up in it.

Its funny how winning puts things in such perspective. And how men and women embed their egos with the fortunes of a particular sports team. In Los Angeles Trojan fans were having the time of their life. National championships, Heisman trophy winners, All-American players on defense and offense – nothing could stop us. I learned football from the Matt Leinart/Reggie Bush tandem. I finally understood the strategy and intricacies of the game and why this sport, of all sports, is America’s darling.

And now Pete Carroll, the coach that masterminded it all, is moving on. Perfect timing too. There is too much baggage surfacing that had been hastily swept under the rug. Players getting benefits that forfeit their eligibility. Seasons and games lost after the fact. NCAA sanctions on the basketball team, barring them from postseason play. A football coaching assistant addicted to prescriptions drugs supplied by school and team doctors. The list goes on and on.

So Pete, best of luck with the Seahawks. Take that winning attitude to the NFL. There are skeptics but I know you’ve got what it takes. USC might’ve reloaded on coaches, but there’s no replacing your energy and the intangibles you bring to a team.