Football
Carroll-ing Season Has Arrived
By Tony Gerdeman

Most people can tell when winter is here by the blasts of an Alberta clipper and the sight of tobogganed reporters embedded at various salt barns around their particular cold-weather states.

This time of year also brings about the migration of college football’s junior class, who declare their intentions to head off to the NFL.

The Buckeyes are no stranger to this phenomenon, having lost a dozen underclassmen to the NFL draft since 2004, including three this year.

But for me, nothing says “winter is here” quite like USC coach Pete Carroll shamelessly advising the underclassmen on his team that they are not ready to leave for the professional ranks--even if they are smack dab at the top of the NFL’s list of prospects.

This time around, it’s redshirt junior quarterback Mark Sanchez’ turn to attempt to pry himself from Carroll’s salacious grip.

By now most everybody has read or seen Carroll’s reaction to what he feels is a bad decision by Sanchez, even though, at worst, Sanchez is the second-highest rated quarterback on most teams’ boards this year. In the previous three NFL drafts, the average contract for the second quarterback drafted is worth $33.7 million with $10 million guaranteed. Sounds like a no-brainer, no?

Yet Carroll has the gall and impudence to declare that he has his player’s best interests at heart.

Yeah, and “this is going to hurt me more than it‘s going to hurt you“.

So on the biggest day in Mark Sanchez’s life, Carroll stood in the same room with his quarterback and talked about what a poor decision he was making, stating that the junior would be tremendously helped by more playing time.

We've heard that from Pete before. Was Matt Leinart helped by more playing time? Had he come out in 2005, he would have likely been the number one overall draft pick in the NFL that year. Instead he stayed for his senior season and dropped to the tenth overall pick in 2006.

Leinart ended up losing $10 million in guaranteed money compared to where he would have been drafted in 2005 and where he actually was drafted in 2006. Add in the $8 million or so in first year salary that he’ll never get back and you’re looking at a decision probably cost him nearly $20 million. It’s a good thing the Leinarts are good about forgiving debts owed to them or Pete Carroll would be $20 million in the hole for not talking Leinart out of coming back.

Then there’s the case of Matt Cassel who apparently needed no playing time at USC, let alone “additional time”, to make his mark in the NFL.

I wonder if Cassel had declared his intentions to leave after his junior year how much we would have heard from Carroll about what a poor decision Cassel was making. I’m guessing he wouldn‘t have even shortened his vacation.

But we’re supposed to believe Carroll’s tempered tantrum is due to the fact that he wants his players to maximize their potential, and apparently the only way they can do that is by staying at USC. As if potential can’t be maximized when they no longer have to worry about classes, books or pizza night, assuming that’s really a problem at USC. Can’t potential be reached quicker and easier when you have more time to devote to it?

And in the meantime you get to support yourself and your family.

But Pete Carroll doesn’t really seem to let his players’ families get in the way of his self-absorbed rationalizations. But then, mercenaries generally don’t.

Take the example of offensive lineman Chilo Rachal who left after his junior season to enter the draft last year. Rachal’s mother had a tumor in her stomach, as he put it, “the size of a six-month old”, and his father, who was 64 at this time last year, had two hernias in his stomach and tendonitis in his knees, yet still had to work construction to take care of Rachal’s mother. So you have a family with no insurance, and all they could get was the type of care that Medicaid provided. And what did Carroll tell Rachal when the two talked about whether or not to declare for the NFL draft? Unbelievably, Carroll tried to convince him to come back to school.

Ailing family be damned when Pete Carroll needs a right guard! Land owners weren’t this reluctant to give up indentured servants at the end of their stated terms.

What kind of man can listen to the story of one of his players, knowing the player had already lost two brothers when he was a child, and is now facing the very real possibility of losing his parents, and then tell the kid it would be in his best interest for him to come back for his senior season?

That’s beyond selfish; it’s almost evil.

Fortunately, Rachal did not listen to Carroll, and instead entered the draft, where he was taken in the second round, signing a four-year contract worth $3.5 million with $1.8 million guaranteed. Could he have made more if he had come back? Maybe. Did he need the money now? Absolutely. Did Pete Carroll care about what Rachal needed? Not even a little.

And let’s not even get into the part about Pete Carroll playing Rachal at right guard because he was worried he’d leave early if he played right tackle.

Does this mean that Pete Carroll’s advice is always terrible? No. He advised several juniors to come back after the 2006 season and they reaped the rewards in the 2008 draft. But that doesn’t mean his intentions were any different than they always are, it’s just that this time it actually worked out for his players.

Now compare Pete Carroll’s actions to those of Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel.

Tressel has a pretty standard rule that if a player is a first-round pick, then they should seriously consider making the jump to the NFL if they feel they are ready.

In the case of running back Chris Wells, Tressel likely would have changed the key codes on the practice facilities just to keep Wells from returning for his senior season.

And if Ohio State one day has one of the top two NFL quarterback prospects on its roster, and he’s grading out as well as Sanchez, and decides to skip his senior season, you would never see Tressel publicly humiliate his quarterback the way Carroll did, even if he felt the player was making a mistake.

He would instead talk about what a great opportunity this is for his player and his player’s family. He wouldn’t stand in front of a group of reporters and bleat like a goat who just had his bottle of milk taken from him.

In fact, most coaches would react the same way Tressel would…and has. Tressel shouldn’t be applauded for doing what is right--it should be expected, of him and other coaches, including Carroll. Parents send their 18-year old kids to these college coaches because they feel these men will have their sons’ best interests at heart. But it seems that when it involves Pete Carroll, the kids’ best interests only come into play if they’re concurrent with Carroll’s own best interests.

It’s a sad state when Carroll’s players are being more mature about their decisions than he is.

Or maybe that’s a tribute to his fantastic mentoring?

Wow, just imagine how much more mature they could be if they’d stick around for another year!

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