Pete Carroll Says He Would've Stayed at USC if He'd Known NCAA Sanctions Were Coming

Pete Carroll has perhaps been, all things considered, the best football coach of the past decade. The one cloud that still hangs over him is the way he left USC for Seattle in early 2010 right before the college program got slapped with sanctions over Reggie Bush. Addressing the assertion that he left because the school was about to be disciplined by the NCAA, Carroll told the LA Times that those allegations were inaccurate:

Carroll is right that the ultimate sanctions — a two-year bowl ban, loss of scholarships, and four years of probation — were more severe than anyone could have ever seen coming (and objectively excessive, considering Bush’s sponsor was a prospective agent who was unaffiliated with the USC program). Nevertheless, there were some clues that the NCAA was planning on dropping the hammer down, and there was speculation at the time that it expedited Carroll’s exit. Via USA Today:

It’s clear that Carroll still feels guilt more than four years after all that went down, but the idea that he would have stayed at USC through its discipline is probably revisionist history.