I said it before, and I'll say it again.  There are 2 things that can push Pete Carroll out of USC.

1. NCAA sanctions
   
2. It stops being fun

The sanctions portion is anyone's guess.  In order for USC to be found guilty of violating the NCAA rules in regards to extra benefits that Reggie Bush was receiving the NCAA has to show that USC knew about it, or should have known about it.  If USC did know about it, then it's cut and dry, we are busted.  So that leaves the question if we should have known about it.  The NCAA does give some leniency towards programs when it comes to outside agents giving money or gifts to athletes.  In this case the agents in question did their illicit business in San Diego.  There are some rumblings about these men being allowed into the USC locker room, but this to me is immaterial.  I have personally been a guest of a player, and a coach in the USC locker room.  I seriously doubt that any wrongdoing occuring on the USC campus.  So should we have known?

  The Reggie Bush case is quite different than the circumstances that hit Oklahoma so hard.  If the gifts were provided by a USC booster, instead of an agent, I believe that an argument could be made for the "should have known" crowd.

 You mentioned the Oklahoma case, so let's look at how it differs from USC.  The car dealership that employed Bomar and Quinn was the largest employer of OU athletes in Norman.  Many OU athletes worked there, and it was owned by an alum.  The dealership was then sold to an Oklahoma State fan, who saw that several of his OU athlete employees were being paid when they weren't at work.  In fact, they had their timecards filled in for days that they were at football practice.  This is when the new owner of the dealership contacts both the NCAA, and OU simultaneously.  There is a misconception that OU self-reported the violation.  They did not, they found out via email exactly at the same time that the NCAA did, so OU did the only thing they could do which was damage control.  The NCAA found that the booster owned dealership should have been more closely monitored by the university since so many athletes worked there, and the violations could have been uncovered if someone simply glanced at the timecards.  OU was found guilty of failure to monitor.

What happened to OU is not in any way comparable to what is going on with Reggie.  You mentioned that McNair might have known what was going on between Reggie and Lake.  At best there is no way to prove this.  My gut feeling is that maybe McNair had some suspicions about what was going on, but proabably never asked so he could have plausible denyability.  A lot of the times lawyers don't want to know if their clients are guilty.  I'm sure this is the same case with McNair.  Is it ethical?  No.  Is McNair telling the truth?  In the legal sense probably yes.

My hope is that USC is not sanctioned for the Reggie Bush case.  I know I'm bias from being an alumnus, but it would be a shame if the shady dealings of Bush, New Era, and his parents, killed an entire season for a team where everyo ne else was following the rules.  

There really is no way to tell if the hammer will fall on the Trojans when it comes to the Bush case, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  If Carroll has some inside knowledge about what is going to happen, then of course he might not want to stick around for it.

As far as the fun factor is concerned, I think Carroll is still having fun .  The boobirds at the Stanford game aren't anything that he likes, but that comes with the territory if you have the kind of success that he has had.  The fact that he has accomplished more than most coaches could ever dream of might leave him longing for a more competitive atmosphere, and new challenges to conquer.

I hope Pete stays for obvious reasons.  USC will definetly take a hit in recruiting when he goes.  When he does leave USC though, I wish him the best of luck in whatever he chooses to do in the future.  Coach is a great guy, and we are lucky to have/have had him.

Most people here welcome anyones input here.  I think you'll find it to be for the most part a respectful atmosphere for Trojans and bruins alike.

As far as the Bush investigation is concerned, USC has cooperated fully with anything that the NCAA, and their investigators have asked for.  The NCAA even requested that USC distance themselves from Bush while the investigation is still open.  This translated to Reggie asked to not attend the Rose Bowl games in 2007 and 2008.

As far as the NCAA not having the guts to sanction USC??? I don't see what would stop them from stomping us if they find that we are deserving of punishment.  They stomped OU pretty hard this year, the belief that they would hesitate to bring down tough sanctions on USC for some sort or preferential treatment, or institutional bias is unfounded.

I'll take a crack at this - hopefully it will be coherent but, X hours working up and reconciling process map activities does cut into brain function a bit...

Well, in order mentioned...

USC as it relates to ESPN and ABC. I think you're overplaying this by making inferences of skullduggery where there are simpler explanations. Why does ESPN over-emphasize USC? I can think of several reasons:

1. They like a simplifying narrative
   
2. Very few football fans are neutral about USC, so either way ESPN gets lots of eyeballs
   
3. USC has been extremely successful over the last several years
   
4. USC is in a major media market

It's not like ESPN is a calm, measured sports reporting entity, it is a sports broadcaster. Think of it this way: network television programs aren't the reason that network television exists. Network television exists to sell advertising.

Similarly, ESPN doesn't exist to broadcast sports, ESPN exists to sell advertising, and they do that by showing sports. How do they increase viewership? They can advertise, but they can also structure their news programs to include extensive adverts for their sporting content.

In that vein, the coverage of USC is partly because for the last several seasons there's been a story to tell, and partly because it generates revenue for ESPN to have people tuning in to shout at the screen. You don't think that they keep Lou Holtz and Mark May on the air because of their winning personalities and keen insight, do you?

As for the We Are SC site, it used to be with scouts.com. There are ESPN affiliated sites out there - for the Arizona Wildcats http://wildcatsportsreport.com/index.php, [Florida Gators, even Mixed Martial Arts. In fact, jumping ahead to one of your other points, there's even an Oklahoma one. I found it by googling the phrase "Oklahoma ESPN affiliate" from your post.

Another way to put this: sometimes things are just as obvious as they seem. There's no need to conclude that ESPN has a secret interest in helping out USC - there's plenty of obvious reasons to hype USC, all of which have to do with ESPN generating $$$ for ABC / Disney.

Substance of the Charges Against Bush You're not going to get a lot of argument about Bush's financial shenanigans on this site. Even though there's not much to be said about the character of his accusers, there's too much circumstantial evidence. He took the money, which was both stupid and staggeringly disloyal, putting his team-mates and University and risk.

Status of the NCAA Investigation The NCAA is surely combing through whatever records they can get out of USC to see if there's any basis on a person-by-person basis for suggesting that someone knew about Bush and did nothing. I've written more than once here that if it can be proven that someone had direct knowledge and did nothing, then shame on them and suck up the punishment.

What I do wonder about though is the standard that the NCAA can use of "you should have known." Other sites have made noise about past years at USC in which agents were able to get access to the locker room for home games and so on, but USC's Compliance Office could reasonably claim (no laughing in the back there) that they were following some kind of rules about clear monitoring of agents. IIRC, Bush had a summer job working for an agent, while he was getting money from New Age whatever-the-name-was.

The reason that I wonder about this is that the deterrence system didn't fail, exactly. In principle, it failed because Bush took money and was not detected (so far as I know). However, he went outside the known universe of agents - so precisely how would anyone have known who to be looking out for? The NCAA would presumably think carefully about proceeding with the argument that USC should have been able to identify an inappropriate relationship with a proto-agency that was initiated far from the flagpole, as it were.

Comparability of the Oklahoma case I don't buy the argument that Oklahoma got punished because they weren't USC. If they were going to get punished for not being someone, it should be for not being a team that can win Bowl Games.

As for the specifics of the Oklahoma example, IIRC here's a quick review of what happened:

1. The dealership had been owned by a Sooner booster
   
2. There had been prior issues involving Sooner players and the booster in question
   
3. The dealership had provided cars for Stoops and his staff
   
4. The violation was reported by a new owner of the dealership who didn't want to be tainted by his predecessor's actions
   
5. There was documentary evidence that payment was in excess of hours worked
   
6. Oklahoma only self-reported to have all of the above come back to bite them in the ass.

So by comparison to the Bush case, there were previous issues, the football program had received benefits previously, the AD didn't stop players from working there, and didn't catch on to any of the shenanigans that they could reasonably have anticipated. This is distinctly different from a sub-rosa arrangement conducted with a non-agent away from campus.

As for the article that you cite, the only thing that makes the conspiracy-busting tone seem less overwrought is the comments about how USC arranged to devalue Vince Young, undermine the BCS MNC, cause the 1973 Oil Crisis, and fired the first shots at Fort Sumter. (Obviously that's ridiculous; USC hadn't been founded in time to fire the first shots at Fort Sumter.)

It shouldn't come as a surprise that ESPN didn't pay a lot of attention to the Yahoo Sports story because 1) it came from a competitor, 2) it took a while for substantive details to emerge, and 3) Yahoo Sports' insistence on covering this seems a bit like the WWL hyping the Whatever Bowl, in the hopes that someone will buy in.

In any case, it's possible that the NCAA hasn't done anything because they don't have enough investigators and they haven't worked through all the details yet. It's possible that they haven't done anything because they haven't figured out how to sedate Pat Hill when they give Fresno State the death penalty. It's possible that they haven't done anything because they haven't yet built a case that will withstand lawsuit - an area where we should all tip our hats to former(?) supreme weasel and USC law grad Rick Neuheisel. And if you think that SC wouldn't go after the NCAA if they thought they could win, you're dreaming.

Long story short: all that anyone has demonstrated thus far is that Bush and his family was on the take, and that people can understand the instinctive sense that the university should be punished as well. You can imagine smoke and call it a real fire, I guess; I'll wait until someone produces solid evidence that the university is culpable by virtue of being negligent.

As for the question of whether this will affect Carroll and any thought he might give to leaving for Atlanta: I don't know. Frankly that would seem like a step down in terms of winning and off-field image, in exchange for being somewhat out of the line of fire if there are substantial penalties. But leaving in the off-chance that there will be program-crippling penalties doesn't really seem to fit with Carroll's (public) persona.

In summary, I'm not sure that I'm buying this argument. I'm not saying that Carroll won't leave USC, but I can't see him doing so because he knows he's 10 minutes ahead of chainsaw-wielding NCAA investigators aiming to carve SC into a little wooden George Tirebiter "statue" for the side of the road.

If you had argued that he doesn't know for sure but can see the risks, I'd have signed up. Part of having a good run is knowing where to stop.

Do you run GLB/WWW by yourself?

but Frak and DC Trojan as usual cover all the bases.

I'm not into conspiracy theories and I don't try to predict the future. so I will worry about things as they come up.

I have a feeling that while "gutty little bruin" is making an honest effort at being unbiased and inoffensive, he's also got his aluminum foil hat on a bit tight.

The whole ESPN/ABC/USC conspiracy thing is kind of ludicrous, and basically serves as his entire basis of justification.  It's true that ESPN & ABC tend to talk about USC a lot, but Occam's Razor tends to offer a more convincing reason than some back-room deal: It's because SC has been so dominant for the past 5 years.

Love them or hate them, the truth is the Trojans have been the program in NCAA football for quite a while.  Yes, LSU won the title this year, Florida last year, etc, but year after year the program with the most consistency has been USC.

And trust me, as an Old Blue who has finally seen the Bears put up strong football teams, their dominance is really frustrating.

As for Pete leaving for the NFL, well the whole Bush scandal could very likely be part of his motivation (if it happens).  I mean, that sort of thing coming down would definitely make coaching much less fun than it is.  But the idea of some SC/ESPN/ABC three-headed monster really is way out there.

Oh, and as an outsider I can assure GLB that the folks here at CC are very welcoming, respectful and open to non-SC types.  They don't mind someone offering points of criticism or contrast, or someone supporting their team so long as it isn't nasty and you accept that this is an SC fan site and that it is all in fun.  That being said, it felt good to see Cal beat them in hoops last week.

Go Bears!

He can believe what he wants to regardless if there is a basis in fact for it all.  The fact that everyone in this thread has a bias opinion of the facts, doesn't really help the conclusions.  Oski is the only real outsider with nothing to gain or lose, so I would give his opinion more weight than a Trojan or bruin fan in the matter.

 The simple facts in regards to the media coverage that USC gets are that USC gets a lot of air time because USC is the most consistently excellent program over the last 7 years.  Before us it was Miami, Florida State, Oklahoma, and for a couple years ucla when they had McKnown.  USC is the golden program because of its success.  The only NCAA problems that USC has had are with a TV plug that Leinart did back in 2005, and Jarrett's rent issue.  Both in my opinion were fairly innocent in nature.  The Bush incident is not innocent at all, and is also the first really serious trouble that USC has seen under the Carroll regime.  You can't really speculate about a conspiracy, or special treatment of USC if they haven't received any special treatment in the past.  If USC does get off scott-free then I'm sure there will be a lot of OU, and ucla fans that will be angry and cry foul.  

Interesting news.

If Pete Carroll does leave for the NFL, a familiar name is coming back to town, and wants to be considered for the job.  More details to come.

with the express intent to put his name into the USC hat should Carroll decide to leave for the NFL.  All I can say at this moment, is that I hope he gets the job if Carroll leaves.  I would feel really comfortable with this guy at the helm.  It is not John Robinson btw.