Seahawks coach Pete Carroll launched his Win Forever (hey, we didn’t call it Cheat Forever . . . oops) book tour nearly two weeks ago. Given the announcement in June from the NCAA that significant sanctions had been imposed against the college program Carroll previously captained, the media was far more interested in asking him about the struggles of USC than the contents of Carroll’s new book.
But instead of trying to float implausible explanations to support his position that USC didn’t know and shouldn’t have known that former Trojan tailback Reggie Bush was getting paid, Carroll should have simply told it like it is. Yes, guys get paid by unscrupulous agents at every college program and, no, USC and other college programs don’t do enough to police those practices.
If Carroll had followed that approach, he would have come off as a genius, given the subsequent emergence of new investigations involving multiple college football programs.
And even with more and more proof of the widespread nature of the practices emerging, Carroll continues to hide behind the notion -- which no one really believes -- that USC did nothing wrong.
“The book had to come out now,” Carroll told Vinnie Iyer of Sporting News. “It turned out to be an opportune time to be singing the praises of the history, standards and expectations of the ‘SC program. So people who want to know can hear the truth of what’s going on and not the perception of what they’re hearing.”
The truth is that Bush and many other college football players got paid. The truth is that Carroll and USC benefited from an environment in which recruits believed they could get paid without questions being asked. The truth is that Carroll can’t handle the truth.
(Yeah, it’s a tired old line, but I’m watching a young Jack Nicholson in the timeless One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on AMC, so I feel less lame using it.)