Pete’s on the Hot Seat

We’ve been inactive for quite awhile.  Some might have taken that as a sign that we were content with the job Pete Carroll was doing.  Far from it, as the season is about to come to an end in just the way we predicted, with USC lined up to play in its fourth consecutive Rose Bowl, against a pushover Big 10 team, this particular one being led by a man who’s likely to coach from home.

So no, we’re not happy.  We’ve just been biding our time watching the coaching carousel spin round and round, hoping the administration would be smart enough to tell Carroll his ride is over instead of allowing him to continue reaching for that elusive brass ring that he will never grasp.

Not that I expected any different, but the SEC continues to be a cannibalized feeding frenzy, mercilessly ravaging each other even early in the season, leaving little hope that one will emerge unscathed.  If only everyone would recognize, like I have, that a two-loss SEC season is better than an undefeated season anywhere else, probably even the NFL.

The SEC is just too talented from the top all the way to the very, very bottom.  How else can you explain the Ole Miss Rebels beating #4 Florida, which was lead by a Heisman-winning quarterback?  It just proves that no team in the SEC is a pushover, no matter how long it’s been since that team has won a game in conference.

While over on this end of the country, the PAC-10 continues to prove its sub-mediocrity.  If the only ranked team from the conference losing to an unranked team from the conference doesn’t prove to you how bad the conference is, I don’t know what will.

Unfortunately for Florida, the road doesn’t get any easier.  There’s no time to heal bruises in the SEC.  Instead, the Gators have to turn right around and play Arkansas on the road.  The same Arkansas team that currently has two rookie NFL running backs running all over the place.

Meanwhile USC gets the equivalent of a bye week while hosting the Oregon Ducks at the Coliseum.  The lowly Ducks are only ranked #23 and have already lost a game as well, despite having such great back-up quarterbacks.

But let’s take a deeper look at last week’s losses.

*Florida lost at home, where the crowd was on their side.  That knowledge lulled them into giving up a 10 point halftime lead.

But USC, playing in a hostile road environment at a venue that had caused them problems two years before, should have known what to expect and been ready for it.

*Florida was a blocked PAT away from sending the game to overtime, where they surely would have found the grit and resolve to put away the team that produced last year’s Super Bowl MVP.

Meanwhile, USC lost by SIX points to an Oregon State team whose most well-known NFL players are on teams that haven’t even won a game this season.  (Unless you count the 1-win Cleveland Browns.  But no one had even HEARD of Derek Anderson until last year.)

*Again, Ole Miss had the element of surprise in their favor, as they hadn’t beaten a ranked team since 2003.  Knowing that Oregon State had accomplished this five times in the same time span, USC should have been better prepared.

It’s clear that one of these losses was much, much worse than the others.

So not only do my Trojans lose because they were too big and strong to tackle a pint-sized running back who managed to make playing a #1 ranked football team look a lot like that scene in Ratatoullie where Remy is scurrying about the kitchen underfoot, barely avoiding calamity and miraculously saving the soup…

I also wake up this morning to find out my bank went bellyup, got seized by the government, and was sold off to JPMorgan Chase leaving all of EstablishTheRun’s startup capital for his burrito stand flying in the wind. Don’t talk to me about FDIC insurance. They’ve only got $45.2 billion in that fund, Wamu banks more than $30 bill and Wachovia’s about to go under. Why am I talking about all this you might ask?

Because it’s a crisis. We all know our financial system’s in the tank. We also know Henry Paulson is about to ride to the rescue atop a $700,000,000,000 steed. A lot of whiners are up in arms about this, saying we should let the market deal with it, and that tax payer money shouldn’t be used to bail out the Suits who spent our 401(k)s helping burger-flippers buy a McMansion in Malibu. I say quit your whining! At least Henry Paulson’s doing something about the financial crisis, which is a lot more than can be said about Steve Sample and our current crisis.

For those of you who aren’t passionate enough about USC football to recognize that guy on the right, that’s Steve Sample, the president of USC. I know that some people would say he’s an exceptional leader and that he’s turned USC into an academic powerhouse, a powerful social and cultural force, and a sports juggernaut. In fact, in a previous post, your very own Trojan prophet described him as a “…brilliant school president”. I stand corrected. Steve Sample has failed us.

Just like all those so-called ‘Pollyannas’ who accurately predicted the sub-prime mortgage mess, there have been Trojans (namely me and my co-blogger) who were willing to say what everyone was thinking but no one was saying: “Pete Carroll can only be counted on to win 11 games a year” Sadly, we’ve been ignored and vilified and our prophecies fell on deaf ears. And Sample’s administration sat on its hands, doing nothing to prevent last night’s catastrophe. Sample was either asleep at the wheel or too busy counting Pete’s trophies in Heritage Hall to realize that the wheels were coming off that bus he keeps falling asleep while driving.

And now when the sky is falling, where is his bailout plan? At least Paulson has woken up. He recognizes the need to do away with free market enterprise and throw money at the problem. But Mr. Sample is apparently content to stand pat, to give Pete another chance. Well then what exactly are we doing with that $3.7 billion endowment? We’re certainly not winning BCS National Championship trophies more than once every few years. Do the math.

No one is more responsible for our Trojan’s ability to make it to a record 6 straight BCS bowls but having only two and a half of those games actually matter than Pete Carroll and no one is more responsible for Pete Carroll making it to all those BCS games and only winning one and a half national titles than Steven B. Sample. So, Steve, listen up. Unless you want me and Don’tBendDon’tBreak to change the name of this blog to “Steven’s on the Steamin’ Divan” or “Steve’s Got Us Peeved” and start calling for your resignation, you need to step up and show some freakin’ LEADERSHIP. USC is in a free fall. All of our worst fears have come to pass. It frankly can’t get any worse than having to resort to an onside kick and losing to a Pac 10 team by TWO field goals (almost ONE touchdown) because some guy name ‘Jacuzzi’ kept running between our legs. In order to avoid finding out if it can get any worse and suffering a total USC meltdown, we need action, and we need it fast. There’s no time for oversight from the Board of Directors or any sort of action reflecting the will of the students and alumni, Steve, it’s time to get up on that $3.7 billion dollar horse you fund raised your butt off for and LEAD OUR UNIVERSITY.

In case you didn’t bother to write up a plan to lead the University of Southern California back to glory, I’ll do you a favor and spell out exactly the plan you need enact:

1. Put Pete Carroll on double-whammy, no-take-backs probation, effectively immediately. If we either: 1) allow another team to score multiple touchdowns, 2) score less than 50 points in any game, or 3) win the stupid Rose Bowl one more time, he’s fired, on the spot. “Bye Pete, thanks for one and a half national championships, three Heismans, six straight Pac 10 titles… oh, and fifteen losses and four straight (probably) non-championships and a whole lot of nothing!”

2. The coaching search needs to begin immediately and in earnest and as soon as it begins it needs to end, because it begins and ends with Norm Chow. I think we all knew that when Pete let Norm go he was also letting go of our dreams of yearly national championships. It’s no surprise that we’ve only won one Heisman trophy without him. I don’t care what UCLA’s paying him. We’ve got almost $4 billion to work with. Which brings me to the most critical part of the rescue plan and the part that’s sure to get me more than a little flak.

3. We’re not spending enough on our football program. We need better facilities, better accommodations, better equipment. Something. Because year after year we keep losing out on a couple blue chip recruits, and those recruits can make the difference between a number one ranked recruiting class and a number one ranked team. That won’t lose to unranked Pac 10 pansies. I know it takes time to build our endowment, so there’s only one realistic answer: we need to cut spending. What athletic programs are under performing? Cut them. Which sports aren’t packing the stands? Sell the stands. We can’t keep pouring money into the failing programs just because they’ve been successful in the past. We all know there’s only one sport that really matters and that’s college football. Michael Phelps apparently goes to Michigan and does anyone care about him? No! They care that the ‘Worst-erines’ lost to Notre Dame. NCAA athletics are a business, plain and simple, and the athletic department’s program bloat is ruining our ROI. Cut your losses Sample, stand up to Mike Garrett, or better yet, fire him, because his Heisman isn’t helping anyone right now. Look, I’m not saying to shutter the baseball team. I know they’ve won 12 national championships but I also know that they haven’t won one since 1998 and they haven’t won 5 in a row since the 70’s. Maybe sell some bats. What about our basketball team? These days they’re more famous for their recruiting than their performance and they’ve never been as good as UCLA’s Men’s BB team. (one of USC athletics’ biggest failures) So why do they need that fancy new Galen center? It’s these kind of entitlement programs that threaten to bankrupt our university and prevent us from facing the modern challenges of playing NCAA football in an era of incredible parity. You don’t have to start by cutting the men’s baseball or men’s basketball programs, but how about the women’s teams? Or maybe the Cross Country squad? Something’s got to give. No one likes cutting athletic programs and telling our athletes they lost their scholarships. But no one likes losing a college football game almost every year either.

That’s the plan. It’s not pretty. But it will work if we act decisively and immediately to avoid further disaster. Steven, you’ve done a lot of good for our university so I’m giving you one last chance to get our football program back to greatness. Put Carroll on the ultra-hot Habanero seat, get Norm Chow back, and spend at least another $150 million on the football program every year. It will work, it has too. I can’t take many more Stanfords and Texas’s and Oregon States. Today at work all my colleagues were trying to make me feel better about the game, saying that it’s better to lose early rather than lose late. Well you know what Steve? It’s better not to lose at all.

Finally, to address the controversy hurricane currently swirling on our comment boards: I know Pete Carroll’s been pretty good. I know that’s enough for some of you, but it’s not enough for us. Deal with it. A lot of people say “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Well I say, “Sometimes you should look a gift horse in the mouth, because sometimes maybe it’s not a gift horse but a Trojan horse and there are people hiding in there waiting to attack as soon as you open the gates.” Pete might seem like our savior, but he’s not. There’s nothing more dangerous than blind loyalty to failed leadership. Don’t be sheep Trojans. Don’t be sheep.

If Washington Mutual can fail, what makes you think the USC Federal Credit Union isn’t next?

Well here we are, a day away from another dreaded PAC-10 opener.  Pardon me if I avert my eyes from the screen.  I don’t expect this to be pretty.  Not because the competition is tough (actually, just calling it ‘competition’ makes me chuckle), but because Pete Carroll has shown a clear disdain for opening the PAC-10 season with a win.

I for one am tired of Carroll’s blind adherence to his bankrupt ideology “finish strong.”  How about starting strong?  Or better yet, playing strong the entire season?

The spread on this game is 24 points.  Boi From Troy says to take the points.  Coaches Hot Seat goes a step further and predicts that the Trojans will lose this game.

I couldn’t agree more.  Under Pete Carroll, USC has lost FIVE times in September, causing the Trojans to slip in the polls during the early weeks of the season when first impressions are made and forcing the players to rally in the later half of the season in order to get USC back onto the radar.

In ‘honor’ of those five losses, I present five reasons we will likely lose tomorrow night.