USC's Fall From College Sports Elite A Cautionary Tale 1/15/13 Forbes

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Carroll believed that the key to success both on and off the gridiron was to “always compete“. It was this philosophy that the University of Southern California adopted as its own, that in order to win big they had to compete in all aspects, no matter what it took and whether it was done by the rules. This mentality combined with the already haughty ethos of Southern California to create a culture of elitism; the Trojan community lost all sight of right and wrong on its righteous path to athletics glory.

The institutional decline of Southern Cal, as business consultant and educator Jim Collins would put it, came like a staged disease; an initially unknown cancer that ate away silently at USC fed by its own gluttony for success. At first, it was almost impossible to detect but easily correctable. If the powers that be could have saw the writing on the wall and slowed the bleeding, the program might have been saved. Yet USC sunk deeper and deeper into the quicksand of its own arrogance, until it realized that all it had accomplished had only come about because of broken rules and scorched earth.