What an emotional day today. With WR Dwayne Jarrett's departure to the NFL everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop-Will Pete Carroll also go to the NFL?
As of right now it looks like a pretty strong NO!.
I guess no one is every really sure but it looks like Pete Carroll was more definitve in his answers today.
So Many Questions...
Ric Francis-AP
Then Carroll closed the loophole he had left open Tuesday, saying that he would not be leaving USC for the Miami Dolphins. Not even if offered full control over personnel decisions and $6 million a year.
"I thought about it," Carroll said. "I love this football team. I love these players and what we've done, and I love the group of kids we have coming in this recruiting class. I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss this. We've got a lot of good stuff ahead of us, a lot of great fun times, and it's too important to be involved with that. I can't leave it."
That sounds like a NO to me. We all would agree that Pete Carroll's personality would have him want to look at the next level, again. It doesn't matter that he has been there before. It's different now; he's different now so it's only natural that he explores his options. We all go through changes in life, many of them we never would have imagined months or years before we ever made them.
We can only go by his word, but in the dog-eat-dog world of football one never knows.
The Trojans coach returned to campus on Tuesday and confirmed that he met with Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga last weekend while on vacation in Costa Rica.
And during an often confusing news conference, Carroll spoke glowingly of Huizenga and an NFL situation that would afford him full control, seemingly leaving the door open for a possible return to pro football.
But about 30 minutes after meeting with reporters, Carroll called Times columnist T.J. Simers and emphatically repeated several times that he would not leave USC even if the Dolphins offered him everything he wanted.
"I'm not leaving USC," Carroll said.
I don't have a reason not to believe him and he has done a lot more to calm the waters of any questions that we have saw out of Nick Saban. I'm pretty confident that he will stay, at least for next season and really that is all that you can ask for one season at a time.