And by “it” we mean this entire website, the very idea that Pete Carroll, a coach who led USC to 7 straight PAC-10 titles, 7 straight BCS games, and back-to-back national championships, would ever, under any circumstances, be placed on a “hot seat.”

The site had sort of died out due to our laziness, but we were content to let what was already there stay.  But now that Pete Carroll has left, we felt it was time to come clean.

The joke started between the two of us, shortly after the epic game against Texas in the Rose Bowl.  “Uh oh.  Pete Carroll lost a big game.  He’s probably on the hot seat right about now.”  We’d bring it up every time Carroll lost a game.  Which meant that we only brought it up FOUR TIMES during the 2006 and 2007 seasons.

So we started this Onionesque blog prior to the 2008 season, hoping the Trojans would win the national title that year, making our already absurd suggestion that Pete Carroll should be fired even more ludicrous.  Alas, it didn’t work out that way, but we love Pete Carroll just the same.

That’s right.  We freaking LOVE the man.  And this past season doesn’t change a thing.  Carroll had earned the right to have LOTS of 9-4 seasons (and the fact that 9-4 seems so terrible shows how great he was).

To those that got the joke, we hope you enjoyed it.  To those that were outraged, we appreciate your support for Pete Carroll and hope that now that things are out in the open, you can reread some of our posts and find some humor in them.  And to those who actually had the audacity to AGREE with us… well, you’re just a bunch of idiots.

It astounds us that people can actually complain about Pete Carroll, the (former… tear) winningest coach in college football percentage-wise.  One critique thrown around in complete seriousness is that, from 2005-2008, Carroll held the record for most wins without winning a championship.  But that’s not a valid criticism of the man; it’s a condemnation of the system that says “these teams get to play for the title while these teams with the same record don’t.”

Though the money and the challenge were likely the two biggest factors, another reason Pete left was probably so he could lose a few games and still have a chance to win it all.  And we hope he does.

Win forever, Pete.  And fight on!

And all we had to do was look to Pete Carroll himself to realize the perfect way…Twitter! So you can now follow us at https://twitter.com/hotseatpete.

Keep in mind that just because we’re now using Twitter doesn’t mean we think Carroll should. After all, when we neglect our jobs to Twitter, it doesn’t cost USC another national championship.

We may never know how many people fill out March Madness brackets each year.  Tons of people who haven’t watched a single game get in on the action.  Heck, it probably draws a lot of people who couldn’t tell you any of the rules of the game other than you try to get the ball to go through the net.

So most USC fans would have still been able to join the fun regardless of what happened during last weekend’s PAC-10 Tournament and Sunday’s selection show.  But now that the Trojans will be fighting for a chance at the national championship, we can truly be invested in the excitement of the upcoming weeks.

And it’s all thanks to the genius and tenacity of Tim Floyd, USC’s basketball coach.  After the team’s incredible performance against Arizona State on Saturday, I imagine many of you had the same thought as me:

Finally, a USC coach who makes good second half adjustments:

At halftime USC was down 15 points, and all seemed lost.  A lesser coach would have gone through the familiar motions:  motivational speech, couple of substitutions, switch up some defensive assignments.  But Floyd went much, much further.

He had his players run the full-court press even though they had NEVER practiced it before.  They’d barely even practiced playing AGAINST it.

How’s that for confidence in your players?  Letting your guys know that this is what they need to do in order to win and that you believe they can do it.  Not to take anything away from the great plays made by the athletes, but one of the main reasons they played so well in the second-half is because Tim Floyd let them know he believed they could.

Then, on the other side of campus, we’ve got Pete Carroll, who’s famous for relying on his best players and taking away some of the responsibilities of others, which only erodes their confidence, rendering them incapable of coming through when they are needed in the clutch.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.  Sometimes Carroll BENCHES his best players when it matters most.  Recall the infamous 4th & 2 against Texas in the Rose Bowl.  Heisman-winning running back Reggie Bush was on the sidelines.  Heisman-winning quarterback Matt Leinart was relegated to simply handing the ball off.

I’m not trying to disparage Lendale White.  He’s a great player, and 9 times out of 10, he’d have gotten that first down.  But when the game is on the line, the opponent is going to step up.  So instead of running the exact play they expect, a play that’s already been used countless times during the game, why not have the faith in your players to execute something new?

Put both Bush and White in the backfield and run the wishbone for the first time ever.  Or let Bush run the wildcat, with the option of running, lateraling to Lendale, or passing to a tight end.

I could go on and on naming plays that would have been better than the one called, mainly because ANY play would have been better.  But the point is, Carroll only trusted his players to successfully run what they’d trained over and over and over.  That’s not good coaching.  That’s the theory of probability.

Dwelling on it won’t change the past, but it’s a genuine concern.  Maybe Carroll should start hanging out with Floyd and learn a thing or two.  Another lesson Floyd could teach him is how to get your team in the position to win it all.

Without college basketball’s playoff system, USC would be nowhere near the championship game.  But it’s not Tim Floyd’s fault that the system exists.  He’s just working within it, and now he’s gotten the Trojans within 5 wins of playing for the trophy.

After USC beat ucla on Friday night, many pundits were saying that might be enough to get them into the dance.  But did Floyd sit on his laurels and hope for the best?  No.  He made it a guarantee that they would be playing for all the marbles.  He could have easily lost to Arizona State and then made excuses about how USC should have been given a spot in the tournament.  But Floyd doesn’t make excuses.  He makes history.  The first USC basketball coach to win 20 games in three straight seasons and first to get USC to the tournament three years in a row.

Carroll, on the other hand, doesn’t make history.  He repeats it.  You can practically set your calendars to the once a year that Carroll complains about NCAA Football not having a playoff system, extolling how great the team is playing right now and what a shame it is that they don’t get to show that talent against some other great teams.

If Carroll wants to change the system, he should join a committee.  If he wants to become a good coach, he should start hanging out with Tim Floyd.

But I wouldn’t hold my breath.  Floyd worked miracles over the weekend, but helping Carroll reach any kind of success would require magic that only exists in fairytales.

So we’ll just have to live with what we’ve got.  An up-and-coming basketball team coached by a man who will go down in history, and a slowly fading football team coached by a man who will also go down in history…for sinking an elite program into total irrelevancy.

Remember that time Pete Carroll lost to Stanford at home?  No, no, the other time.

That’s right.  It happened TWICE.

Read more in The Losses.

A recent report has revealed the highest paid people at private universities throughout the country.  Coming in at number two on the list is Columbia’s David N. Silvers, a clinical professor for dermatology.  This man makes 4.3 million dollars a year.

Now, that might sound crazy.  But at least he’s a lot better at dealing with blemishes than the number one person on the list.  In case you haven’t guess it by now, it’s the one, the only, the Pete Carroll.

Exactly how much does Carroll’s mediocrity cost the university each and every year?  Try 4.4 MILLION dollars.

That’s obviously a lot of bones, but I suppose we should try to put things into perspective.  For instance, many actors get paid 20 million dollars per film.  And Pete Carroll is at least as good of a coach as Keanu Reeves is an actor.

But even the best of coaches don’t approach the kind of money celebrities see, so it’s probably best to compare him to other college football coaches.  The vast majority of them make in the millions, so it shouldn’t surprise us to see that number next to his salary.  But apparently quality of goods rendered doesn’t play that big of a factor, because Carroll is charging like he’s an Arnie Morton’s yet dishing out entrees like he’s an Outback Steakhouse.

Some have tried to justify his salary by pointing out that since he’s been here the school has seen its endowment rise from $13.7 million in 2001 to $39 million in 2008.  And the revenue from the athletic department alone has risen from $38.6 million in 2001 to $76 million last season.

But they fail to mention the other thing that’s risen significantly since he arrived: the expectations of the fans.  When he started, a one or two loss season was worth a raise.  Now, it deserves a demerit.  Otherwise, what’s to motivate him to improve next year?  He can put in the same amount of effort, get the same result (another Rose Bowl win), and still collect his millions.

No wonder he always has that big goofy grin on his face.

Enjoy being at the top of this list, Pete.  It will likely be the only time you’re number one for quite some time.

Apparently Pete Carroll has already given up on the #1 ranked tailback recruit, Bryce Brown.  Well, USC has said that “they are no longer interested.”  Sort of like how I said I was no longer interested in Angelina Jolie once she got with Brad Pitt.

Considering the shortage at tailback USC will have after next season, this would be a nice pickup.  Hopefully Carroll’s not hoping that McKnight will stick around for his senior season.  We all know how the strategy of betting your offense on a star returning player worked out for him.

As long as Brown doesn’t choose Oregon, which is one of his finalists, I won’t be too angry.  No Big 10 schools are on his shortlist, so we won’t have to worry about him running through our malnourished defense in next year’s Rose Bowl.

We’ve added another entry to the list of possible replacements for Pete Carroll.  Our previous two suggestions, Bill Synder and Lane Kiffin, have already been snagged.  This one is still available, so get on it, Mike Garrett.

It’s been a week since Signing Day, but we’re not closer to sorting through the rubble.  Some overly optimistic sources rank USC’s incoming recruiting class as high as fourth, while the more realistic ones put it around seventh.  But at least there’s one thing they can all agree on:  As usual, Pete Carroll isn’t first.

USC did get the #1 overall player, but considering how long that’s been a done deal, it’s hard to get excited about it.  The kid is already attending the school and practicing with the team, for crying out loud.  Plus, he’s a quarterback, which is far from a priority right now.  Sure, it’s more of a priority now than it would been had Pete not scared Sanchez away, but there are two other QBs who will likely finish their careers before Matt Barkley plays one Rose Bowl winning season and uses that momentum to become the first QB taken in the NFL draft.

But even given the hidden potential of Barkley, he does little to make up for the players that Pete managed to lose on signing day, including three that went to schools the Trojans play every season.

First, there’s the number one linebacker in the country, Manti Te’o.  He chose the Fighting Irish over the Trojans, and it’s easy to see why.  Notre Dame has almost all of its players from an explosive offense (if you saw the bowl game against Hawaii, you know what I’m talking abut) returning.  The only thing keeping them from a championship run is a great defense, and Te’o will be able to contribute immediately.

With the loss of Maualuga and Cushing, USC could also have used him right away.  But no player deserves to be thrown to the wolves from the very beginning, which would have been the case with the Trojans.  Without Sanchez around, USC won’t have the veteran offense needed to support a shaky defense.  Carroll should have swayed Te’o by landing another great linebacker to compliment him.

But he failed there as well, losing number one ranked inside linebacker Vontaze Burfict to Arizona State. Now, there have been reports that he might not qualify academically to play, but something tells me had he come to USC, this might not have been a problem.

Regardless of whether or not he ever plays a down, the point is, Pete managed to lose him.  We’re talking about a guy who committed as a junior changing his mind on signing day.  The only possible scenario I can imagine is that Pete, being the jokester he is, switched Burfict’s USC letter with an ASU one, not correcting the mistake until it was too late.  Whatever the real reason was, it can’t be any less foolish.

Finally, Randall Carroll, a highly touted cornerback (a position USC will be sorely lacking in season after next), changed his verbal commitment from USC to ucla.  At first I was amused (but not entirely surprised) that Pete had managed to lose a recruit he was related to.  As it turns out, Randall and Pete are not related, much to Randall’s relief.  Don’t be surprised if he changes his name soon to avoid that stigma.  If not, it won’t be long before he’s the Carroll really making a difference in Los Angeles college football.

We could literally go on for hours about the other recruits that Pete lost or those that never had any interest in USC to begin with, but why wallow in our misery?  Instead, we’ll await the beginning of the season, when the new talent evaluates itself on the field.  Only then will we know whether Carroll’s inevitable loss (or possibly losses) will be a result of not knowing how to coach talent or not being able to recruit it.

Watching last night’s absolutely amazing Super Bowl that will undoubtedly go down as the best of all time mainly because of the classic, game-changing play-making orchestrated by the Steelers’ future hall of fame QB Big Ben, I couldn’t help but think about a recent epic game that we failed to highlight.

The Fiesta Bowl.  Texas vs. Ohio State, where once again, Texas won due to last second heroics from a star quarterback.  And this wasn’t against a USC team riding a wave of media success into a national championship game they’d already been deemed the winners of, led by a coach whose ego barely fit into the Rose Bowl that night.  No, this was against a Buckeyes team desperate not to be embarrassed on the big stage during bowl season for the third year in a row.  And they more than accomplished that task.

Also, unlike USC, Ohio State had TWO great quarterbacks at their disposal, Todd Boeckman and Terrelle Pryor.  Now, by no means am I saying that these two QBs are as good as Matt Leinart was, at least not separately.  But when taken together in a one-two punch, they add a factor to the game that USC has always been lacking.  (Not to mention the fact that by the time the Rose Bowl came around, Leinart had been practically brainwashed by the media and Pete Carroll into thinking his team couldn’t lose, as evidenced by this clip.)

Boeckman, a quarterback who stands a high chance of not being drafted at all, literally had nothing to lose.  He played the game of his life simply because it was the highlight of his life.  Meanwhile, as the Dude would say, “new shit has come to light” regarding Pryor’s less than truly dynamic play during the game.  He was playing with a severely sprained throwing shoulder which affected his throwing and resulted in him running out of bounds with plenty of open space still in front of him.

Now, a novice to the world of college football would think that this makes Texas’ win less impressive.  Not so.  Because you aren’t taking into account one very important factor.  Heart.  It’s what wins football games, more so than talent or coaching.  Pryor wanted to prove to his coaches that he belonged out on that field despite not being able to throw a decent spiral with any accuracy.  This is why he bravely shoved off defenders with his hurt shoulder in order to haul in a touchdown pass.

In the final game of the season, Tressell opened up the playbook, and when he did so, he realized that there were more than three plays he could call.  He threw everything he had at the Texas Longhorns, but Mack Brown, being the amazing coach that he is, found a way to win the game by utilizing a talented quarterback who doesn’t fold under pressure.  I couldn’t argue with the man had he voted his team #1 in the final coach’s poll, but I don’t have to since he didn’t realize he could do this.

Considering their head-to-head record and Brown’s ability in close games, it’s obvious that he is light years beyond Carroll and would have easily won had their two teams matched up this year.

Disagree all you want, but before you do, answer this.  When’s the last time Pete Carroll won a bowl game in the closing seconds?

We’ve updated The Losses page with a story about the epic fail Pete Carroll had against the epic failure Joey Harrington.