Not quite. I'm a lifelong Dolphin fan but also a USC alum. It's phenomenal how much Carroll has meant to our program and university pride in general. For a decade the alumni gatherings and homecoming were downright blase since the football program was in doldrums. Now I'm being contacted by friends I hadn't heard from since the '80s, saying they're going to a game in the Coliseum and asking if I'll be there.
We were flat out lucky to land Pete Carroll. It's never emphasized enough that Mike Garrett, our AD, tried to lure at least 5 or 6 coaches ahead of Carroll. Including both Oregon coaches, which meant Dennis Erickson.
To demonstrate how low the expectations and excitement were when we hired Carroll, a few days after he was hired I wrote a very positive letter to the editor of Trojan Family, the alumni magazine, praising the Carroll hiring and saying he was an underrated coach who got a bad rap as New England head coach. The letter was never published. About a year later I was introduced to the editor of Trojan Family at a journalism department function. I mentioned my letter to the editor and was shocked when he said he remembered it. Get this, he said he thought it was facetious, that's why it wasn't published. The magazine had received many letters in disgust or surprise at hiring Carroll, and only mine praising Carroll. The editor said he didn't know anything about Carroll at the time, and concluded the majority were probably correct so he didn't want the magazine to look foolish by publishing a positive review of Carroll.
