Pete Carroll is inducted into the USC Hall of Fame, talks NCAA sanctions

The Seattle Seahawks head coach was also coach of the USC Trojans during their championship runs of 2003-05.

When sports have died, and all sports writing has followed in its wake one word will still be uttered on the lips of Earth’s citizens: DEFLATEGATE

That is how it appears after the NFL brought down sanctions on the New England Patriots and Tom Brady for deflating footballs during the 2014 AFC Championship.

Discussion of the controversy invaded the press conference following Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll’s induction into the USC Athletics Hall of Fame. At the press conference, the sanctions were tied together with sanctions against the school’s football and basketball programs while Carroll was head football coach.

For the crime of allowing sports marketers to give gifts to Reggie Bush from 2003-05, in 2010 the NCAA imposed scholarship reductions on the football program, and vacated the team’s wins during that period, including two national championships.

Carroll responded by kindly mumbling his answers.

(Discussion of DeflateGate starts around the 10:50 mark)

Jack Del Rio, the Oakland Raiders head coach who was also induced into the USC Athletics Hall of Fame, compared the overreaction of the Patriots DeflateGate penalty to the NCAA overreacting to the USC sanctions for football star Reggie Bush and basketball star O.J. Mayo accepting illegal gifts.

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Carroll was a little less pronounced in his condemnation of the USC sanctions in relation to DeflateGate, saying about the Patriots penalties, “Nobody wants to play this game thinking that somebody has some kind of advantage, players and fans alike, and so they did the right thing in following up on it.”

Both investigations have some similarities. While the investigations were imperfect and had some holes in them, the real injustice was the over-punishment. Deflating footballs did not really give the Patriots a noticeable advantage; instead it was the principle of fair play that they violated. Similarly, the act providing gifts to Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo changed nothing in terms of the competitive edge for those programs, and even the principle of maintaining amateur status for Mayo and Bush is suspicious.

The Trojans may never receive their vacated wins back. But most observers will know those Trojan teams as champions regardless of sanctions. The same will be said for the Patriots, no matter what the NFL tries to do.

[H/T: Los Angeles Times, link II]

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