I agree that most are thugs and the like. My point being it doesn't just pertain to PSU. Hell look at "The U" Their whole program hit the fan and hasn't recovered yet. FSU the same thing. Geez last year they couldn't even field a whole team for their bowl game.
As far as the DUI. It's kinda like riding a motorcycle. There are the ones that have had an accident & ones that will. If you drink and drive you eventually will get busted.

Brett was either exaggerating or he really doesn't know what he's talking about. Sure there is a very strong fan base in So Cal for USC, But there is so much to do here, so many types of sports, so many real celebrities that the USC football players aren't that big of a deal once they get out of their inner-circle of fans.
Of all the people I know, only about 1 in 20 are USC fans of any sort, only about 1 in 100 is a serious USC fan who would recognize a USC football player if he saw one.
It's not anything like it was when I was in Knoxville last year, at least half the people I met in that town were fanatical volunteer fans.

Pete Carroll is a big deal here but even he is approachable. I've had conversations with him on three different occasions and it wasn't that weird. He seems to me like a very honest person who doesn't pretend to be someone he's not. You see him all excited on the sidelines, that's just who he is. Like a big kid who loves the excitement of football.

Seeing one of the Lakers would be a bigger deal, seeing some Hollywood babe half-dressed would be a big deal, but the USC football players? not so much. With USC it isn't so much the pieces as it is the program.
Personally I'm a fan of the incredible program and tradition. The players come and go.
There are two players on the USC team I know and I root for and hope they do well but that's because they are friends of the family.

That's very cool Sammy. Carol wasn't treated very good up here, (I'm not a Pats fan at all). That's awesome he is a down to earth guy. Yeah, Brent getting up there and as the game progressed there wasn't much to talk about.

Sammy is correct again. USC Football players are not held on a pedestal in LA. There is simply not the widespread fan interest or intensity for college or pro sports that one finds in other states. It may well be that there is just too much to do here.

I have been to Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina on game day. Those are some seriously committed folks in those states! Trojan fans are absolutely indifferent compared to these places.

Mike

You mean the Big 10, right (Penn-State, Ohio State, etc)? Because the Big 12 mostly runs spread offenses and had the best group of quarterbacks in the country, including heisman winner Sam Bradford and runner up Colt McCoy. Too bad OSU and TTU played like crap in their bowl games.

Nice game by USC, but could Herbstreet have laid it on any thicker? If anything, this game further exposed the Big 10 as horribly overrated.

Overrated? I haven't heard a kind word about the Big Ten this year. They suck, but everyone knows it. Overrated? No.....just bad.

Lets let Joe P go down in history as a great coach; but he has to go. Penn State is overrated and always has been.

This is going to get interesting.
BCS has Alabama at 4th. They are losing to Utah. They might pull it out but even if they do, they don't deserve to be ranked ahead of USC based on their performance tonight.

There are already all kinds of sportswriters and commentators saying that USC should be playing for the national title. I'm not one of them but they are all over the place.
If Bama loses and Florida wins but doesn't look good doing so, we could be looking at another split championship with the AP giving it to USC.
It could happen. Again.

What happened here was that a very very good solid football team that relied on the run, met up with a Blitzgrieg passing and running attack. This is what wiped out the midwestern schools back before they learned about passing -- decades ago, kiddies. Now it has happened again.

I think Pete C. is a good guy all around and he is surely an xlnt coach. He has a long way to go to match Paterno however. But he may well get there.

But Alabama is from the SEC, and we all know that the SEC's the only NCAAF conference worth something:eek: All others are pretenders.

Side note, I guess Oregon State wasn't that bad after all (Utah 31-28). Maybe Michigan (Utah 25-23) could even have beaten the (low)tide.

USC players are put on a pedestal out here, just like the major college players are everywhere else... I mean they are filming shorts with people like Will Ferrell etc that go on Youtube. or Leinart dating movie stars etc...yeah they are on a pedestal.

And that is not to mention players like Reggie Bush who got hundreds of thousands of dollars from boosters while attending school... the word is that the NCAA has found a lot of problems going on with this at USC and it is just a matter of time before it all gets exposed.

Im saying this and I actually like USC and Pete Carroll...but something seems to stink in their recruiting methods.

Who needs pro football in L.A.?

USC or UCLA is all L.A. needs. Like Kirk Herbstriet said, great players from either team are regarded as celebrities in this town. Of course, that's what this town is concerned with...celebrities... :rolleyes:

And to hell with the Raiders and the Rams; they ****ed us over when both teams left. It's always around this time of year that fair weather fans like Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen decry, "We need a pro football team in L.A," like those three know the first thing about the beauty of a goal line stance.

Excuse me, but aren't The Galaxy a pro "football" team. ;)

In any event, I'm a San Diego (Super) Chargers fan, (back from way back in the Fouts/Correal days). Want to go further? Let's talk about Kenny Stabler. ;)

In the meantime, fight on, you gutsy Trojans. And here's to hoping the Bruins can get their crap together for 2009. SmileWavy

I would argue that OSU and PSU are ranked higher than they deserve to be. Many non-BCS conference teams play more difficult schedules than Big 10 teams. I hope UT crushes OSU in the Fiesta Bowl.


While the AP voters can rebel and vote USC #1, it's more of an astrix than anything. The agreed upon process is that the winner of the BCS title game is the national champion.

I don't like USC, but is there a better fit for LA and USC than Pete Carrol? That guy is a perfect, he just screams laid-back SoCal.

Interesting comments from the other side. Folks were saying 'Bama could be in for a let down, looks like it happened. As far as over-rated... Can we say Notre Dame??? Why do you think they lost 9 straight bowl games? They've been overated for years. Penn St.? Over-rated? They started the season like 20th in the country, about right. They 'worked' they're way to the top ten where they deserved to be. Yeah their defense let them down and like I said earlier Sanchez had a lights out game.
It's all good, (shhhhhh.... I'm beginning to think Joe Pa should maybe let go also :( )

Paterno just signed for a 3 year coaching deal, renegotiatable after every year. *sigh*

As much as I like Penn State and Coach Paterno, you must respect both, the true success of the past and to a lessor extent today cannot be denied (MHO). However, Coach Paterno, as sad is slowing down, he has to be. Football has changed to some extent and maybe he needs to develop his replacement, i.e. his legacy. I do not know the answer to this question and would like an answer, how many of his assistants have gone on to great success?

As far as USC. Well there was a day when I could not stand them. Them and Noter Dame; if you asked me in those days how I was pulling for, my response would have been who's playing SC and who's playing Noter Dame?

In USC's case, Coach Carrol has change that. What he has done with USC has been superb! The team he coaches is just that, a great team. If anything the Trojans deserve great admiration and respect. I am a fan of the Trojans and I am a big Pac Ten fan. Not to deny any other program or conference their just dues, I find that the quality of football on the left coast is just flat out fun. It seems to me that the conference (as well as other great teams of our current NCAA) play GREAT TEAM FOOTBALL. But Coach Carrol may seem to be laid back, but he and USC do more than just football here in SOCAL. I admire him and I admire the Trojans. I like the fact that they may not get the national lime light, but that just makes it all the more fun. The recent years in college football have been exciting, no program, no team can not be taken on by the up and coming programs, it is everywhere, it may have saved the value and pleasure of watching the great teams we have, in all conferences.

As far as pro ball in So Cal, I just don't care. We have the Chargers, and the Niners and for those with the passion the Raiders.

This is Pete Carroll's charity, "A Better LA" started by him with his time and with some money out of his own pocket.
http://www.abetterla.com/

http://wearesc.com/news/story.php?article=1703

here is what Pete Carroll really is: http://www.petecarroll.com/index.cfm/pk/view/cd/NAA/cdid/411456/pid/400025
It's a 60 minutes clip, and well worth the 12 minutes it takes. sorry about the commercial at the beginning, can't do much about that.

There are plenty of things you don't know about USC football coach Pete Carroll
By J.R. Moehringer

Pete Carroll, head coach of the football team at the University of Southern California, turns to me one night around 8 p.m. and says he’s got something to do, somewhere he needs to be. We’re standing outside his office at Heritage Hall, the redbrick headquarters of USC’s athletic program, the trophy-filled heart of Troy. I ask Carroll where he’s going, what he’s doing. He doesn’t answer.

I ask if I can come along. No, he says, absolutely not. I ask again. Sorry, he says. I stare imploringly. OK, he says, looking me up and down—but you’d better change. He rummages through a small wardrobe in the corner of his office and finds a white polo, which he flips to me like a screen pass.

Put this on.

How come?

Your shirt, it’s blue—you might get shot.

Where the hell are we going?

He walks quickly out of the office.

2. HE OFTEN WOULDN’T LET ME TAKE NOTES, SO SOME QUOTATIONS ARE APPROXIMATIONS FROM MEMORY

While wriggling into Carroll's shirt, I hurry to keep pace. It’s not easy. Carroll’s normal gait is what others might call a wind sprint. Down some stairs, around a practice field, through a parking lot, we zoom across campus. He tells me to stow my notebook. It might make the people we’re meeting uncomfortable.

Who are we meeting?

Look for a blue van, Carroll says.

A blue van?

There, he says. Sure enough, a blue van is double-parked at the corner, and beside it stands our driver and escort for the night, a deep-chested, gentle-voiced man named Bo Taylor. I climb into the backseat. Carroll rides shotgun.

Along the way Taylor tells me that he and Carroll do this often. They make late-night journeys through the dicey precincts of Los Angeles. Alone, unarmed, they cruise the desolate, impoverished, crime-ridden streets, meeting as many people (mostly young men) as possible. The mission: Let them know that someone busy, someone famous, someone well known for winning, is thinking about them, rooting for them. The young men have hard stories, grim stories, about their everyday lives, and at the very least Carroll’s visit gives them a different story to tell tomorrow. Carroll says: “Somebody they would never think would come to them and care about them and worry about them—did. I think it gives them hope.”

Few fans of USC, Carroll concedes, know that he spends his nights this way. He’s not sure he wants them to know. He’s not sure he wants anyone to know. I ask what his wife of 31 years, Glena, thinks of these excursions. He doesn’t answer. (Days later Glena tells me with a laugh that she doesn’t worry about Carroll driving around L.A., but she drew the line when he mentioned visiting Baghdad.)

We start in east South-Central, a block without streetlights, without stores. Broken glass in the gutters. Fog and gloom in the air. We hop out and approach a group of young men bunched on the sidewalk. Glassy-eyed, they’re either drunk, stoned, or else just dangerously bored. They recognize Carroll right away. Several look around for news trucks and politicians, and they can’t hide their shock when they realize that Carroll is here, relatively speaking, alone.

Carroll shakes hands, asks how everyone’s doing. He marches up and down the sidewalk, the same way he marches up and down a sideline—exhorting, pumping his fist. At first the young men are nervous, starstruck, shy. Gradually they relax. They talk about football, of course, but also about the police, about how difficult it is to find a job. They talk about their lives, and their heads snap back when Carroll listens.

A car pulls up. Someone’s mother, back from the store. She freezes when she sees who’s outside her house. Carroll waves, then helps her with the groceries. He makes several trips, multiple bags in each hand, and the woman yelps with laughter. No, this can’t be. This is too much. Pete Carroll? Coach of the roughest, toughest, slickest college football team in the nation, schlepping eggs and soda from her car to her kitchen?

Next we drive to the Jordan Downs housing projects, one of the most dangerous places in L.A. We find a craps game raging between the main buildings. Forty young men huddle in the dark, a different sort of huddle from the ones Carroll typically supervises. They are smoking, cursing, shoving, intent on the game, but most fall silent and come to attention as they realize who’s behind them. Pete Carroll, someone whispers. Pete Carroll? The most famous sports figure in the city, excluding Kobe Bryant? (Maybe including Bryant.) Pete Carroll, mentor to Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, LenDale White—here? A sweet-faced teen named Jerome steps away from the game. He stares at Carroll, shakes his head as if to clear it. He says the same thing over and over. Pete Carroll in the ghetto. Man, this is crazy. Pete Carroll—in the ghetto! Crazy.

Some time after midnight Carroll and Taylor head for the van. Time to get back to Heritage Hall, where Carroll will catch a few hours of sleep on his office floor before his assistant coaches start showing up. A young man stops Carroll, takes the coach aside and becomes emotional while explaining how much this visit has meant to him. He gives Carroll a bracelet, something he made, a symbol of brotherhood and solidarity. Carroll accepts the bracelet as if it were a Rolex. He’ll wear it for days, often pushing back his sleeve to admire and play with it. He gives several young men his cell phone number—something he’s never offered me—and tells them to call if they ever need to talk. One, an ex-con, will call early the next morning and confide in Carroll about his struggles feeding his family. Carroll will vow to help find him a job. (So far, Taylor says, Carroll has found part-time jobs for 40 young men.)

Driving back to campus, Taylor is bleary-eyed, I’m half asleep, and Carroll looks as if he could go for a brisk 5K run, then start a big home improvement project. I ask Taylor if people on the streets ever seem suspicious of Carroll. Do they ever think he’s grandstanding or recruiting—or crazy? Taylor says he’s heard almost no cynicism, though he admits that he was doubtful at first. “Pete was like, ‘I want to go through the community with you,’ ” Taylor says. Sure, Taylor told Carroll, assuming it was just talk. Then, late one night, Taylor’s phone rang.

Hey, Bo, what’s up?

Not much. Who’s this?

Pete.

Pete who?

Pete Carroll. Hey, man, I’m ready, man. When can we go out there?

Taylor was stunned. Not only did Carroll follow through, but there was something in his tone. He was asking to visit neighborhoods where police don’t like to go, and he was asking without fear. “He asked like he wasn’t afraid,” Taylor says. He turns to look at me in the backseat, to make sure I’m sufficiently astonished or to make sure I’m still awake. “He asked that **** like he was not afraid.”

That's page one, there are six more if you are interested:
http://www.lamag.com/article.aspx?id=6918

I always thought of him as a good coach, but that's a nice new perspective. Thanks.

Great article on Carroll...thanks for posting Sammy