re: does anyone believe pete carroll about why he left usc?

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No, the facts of the case are why he probably didn't expect harsh sanctions.

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It's been all these years later - and I'd bet almost everyone who posts about USC in support of the NCAA - has never read their ridiculous and completely "thin" case against USC.

After reading the NCAA report and the "evidence" (one Todd McNair - coach at USC) - ESPN’s Ted Miller...wrote, “It's become an accepted fact among informed college football observers that the NCAA sanctions against USC were a travesty of justice, and the NCAA’s refusal to revisit that travesty are a massive act of cowardice on the part of the organization.”

ESPN's Ted Miller also states that the sanctions had more to do with objections to the football culture at USC than its alleged noncompliance with NCAA rules:

"During a flight delay last year, I was cornered at an airport by an administrator from a major program outside the Pac-12. He made fun of me as a "USC fanboy" because of my rants against the NCAA ruling against the Trojans. But we started talking. Turned out he agreed with just about all my points. (He just didn't like USC.)

He told me, after some small talk and off-the-record, that "everybody" thought USC got screwed. He said that he thought the NCAA was trying to scare everyone with the ruling, but subsequent major violations cases put it in a pickle.

Then he told me that USC was punished for its "USC-ness," that while many teams had closed down access — to media, to fans, etc. — USC under Pete Carroll was completely open, and that was widely resented. There was a widespread belief the national media fawned on USC because of this. Further, more than a few schools thought that the presence of big-time celebrities, such as Snoop Dogg and Will Ferrell, at practices and at games constituted an unfair recruiting advantage for the Trojans.

It wasn't against the rules, but everyone hated it. This, as he assessed his own smell test, was a subtext of the so-called atmosphere of noncompliance that the NCAA referred to — an atmosphere that oddly yielded very few instances of noncompliance around the football program even after a four-year NCAA investigation."

Post-script...

Todd McNair, a running backs assistant coach at USC, sued the NCAA in June 2011, claiming that the NCAA's investigation was one-sided and his future earnings were impaired by its report on the scandal that led to sanctions against USC. The NCAA determined McNair lied about knowing about some of the gifts to Bush's family.

On November 21, 2012, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Frederick Shaller ruled that the NCAA was "malicious" in its investigation of McNair. In his ruling, the Judge stated that e-mails between an investigative committee member, an NCAA worker, and a person who works in the agency's appeals division "tend to show ill will or hatred" toward McNair.

No one expected the punishment because the facts didn't support it. Everyone at USC was shocked.

I seriously doubt PC thought for a second that a hammer was going to come down on USC. Everyone thought the NCAA had no case tying the football program to the wannabe-agent/Bush affair that was outside of USC.