I often have discussion with colleagues in my business who like to take some good-natured jabs at me in regards to this past weekends loss and the loss to Texas last January. Most are from other college football fans but others do it just to needle me when they see me wearing my USC jacket to work. One guy in particular loves to ride me for the Texas loss incessantly.
I recently had a guy who went to Rutgers try justify their unbeaten record with our 1 loss record. Yeah Right! I calmly informed him that Rutgers wouldn't even get a sniff of the NC game in Glendale. Of course he was undeterred as he continued to extol the virtues of the Scarlet Knights and Head Coach Greg Schiano and how he has turned the program around. That's Ok; sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. Everyone wants to see if they can knock off the champ.
As USC fans we live and die with success and failures that is USC football. We have been blessed with a tremendous amount of success over the past few years and as I have said before there isn't another program or group of fans in the country that wouldn't trade places with us in a minute. That success has been the product of one man, Pete Carroll. He has shown that there is not obstacle too great that can be over come and his positive attitude is why he continues to recruit top players year in and year out.
From Doug Krikorian at the Daily News:
I intercepted Pete Carroll on the way to his office after he had concluded his media session and a radio interview and told him, "You're the one that's created this monster."
He nodded, and managed a faint grin.
"I'd have it no other way," he said. "I'm glad it's come to a point that everyone expects us to win every game. I also expect to win every game."
"But you lose one game, and the Trojan world as we know it has seemingly come unraveled," I said.
"Just remember, we lost a game three years ago and went on to be voted No. 1 in both national polls at the end of the regular season," he said. "We're not out of anything yet. . ."
That's not the attitude of a quitter. We have been very fortunate to have Pete Carroll bring this program back to prominence. There aren't many coaches that you can say this about. As our rivals across town continue to deal with their own coaching issues I feel very lucky that we got him when we did. I don't care that he wasn't the first choice the fact is we got him and he has produce solid results.
As others have noted, mostly out o jealousy, things haven't always been rosy for Carroll. He has had lackluster results in the NFL but that happens and for now it seems he is more suited to the college game. But anything can happen
Certainly things haven't been perfect at SC either, some of the off field issues may put a black mark on the program but as CFR briefly noted yesterday it happens to the best of coaches. Pete Carroll's positive attitude continues to be the driving force of the success of this program and he will continue to succeed as long as that attitude stays positive.