Or maybe I should say Pete’s more of a Bob Ross. He sees happy little trees everywhere, and, more importantly, he sees “happy little mistakes.”
USC football Coach Pete Carroll employed a former NFL tactician last season to help with the team’s punting and kicking game, an arrangement that may have violated NCAA rules that prohibit consultants from coaching, The Times has learned.
Carroll’s action could widen a continuing investigation by the NCAA, the governing body of major college sports, which has been looking at USC football for more than three years and the school’s basketball program for the last year. The probe has been examining specific allegations of improper payments to two players as well as the broader question of whether USC has lost “institutional control” of its athletics department.
Note that it seems to be the consensus of “experts” that such an infraction would fall into the “major” bucket rather than the “minor” bucket. But also note that this infraction is just loop-holey enough that the NCAA can go on ignoring it like it ignores anything else that SoCal might do.
The bylaws say teams may retain temporary consultants “to provide in-service training for the coaching staff, but no interaction with student-athletes is permitted.”
So I’m pretty sure all of this will result in little more than blogger fodder. So is Bruins Nation, who can’t even muster up much righteous incredulity for the news, so common-place these ignored infractions by SoCal have become.
Well we are not sure what else the NCAA is looking at this point. Apparently they have been “looking” for years and to date we have heard nothing. And no one here is going to be holding their breath. Pom Pom and his renegades will continue to operate whatever way they want because clearly NCAA rules don’t apply to them.
Right now the way these stories keep unfolding from the “most scandalous athletic program of this era” the term lack of institutional control applies more appropriately to a hapless, pathetic, impotent NCAA than the rogue program run by Mike Garrett and Chetey Petey.
But again, do understand that this is a serious accusation and would be a serious infraction. Notre Dame fans have spent many a conversation trying to figure out how ND head coaches, past and present, can “carry dead weight” in the form of coaches who offer less contribution than their counterparts. If this accusation is true, Pete decided nobody on his official, legal staff had the proper acumen to coach up his special teams and decided to bring on an illegal, hired-gun to do the work. It’s a very real competitive advantage.
UPDATE: Conquest Chronicles shares their thoughts. Overall it’s a fair-ish piece from the resident SC blogger, but he gets one piece wrong while trying to rationalize.
But what was Rodriguez compensated? Rodriguez states in the piece that his time consulting with Carroll was minimal. Didn’t Charlie Weis have Bill Belechick (sic) consult with him on some ND football issues?
What he CC failed to note is that Weis consulted Belichick during the off-season, and it never involved Belichick monitoring practices or games during the season.
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-15 - November 15, 2009
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-08 - November 8, 2009
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-01 - November 1, 2009
The Biscuit
At some point the NCAA has to shite or get off the pot. How long can you freaking ‘look’ at this stuff? It CAN’T be that hard. They need to just lay the smack down, or go public and admit they have no power to do anything, or no will to do anything, or both.
Irish_Wertzy
What Conquest Chronicles conveniently does is omit the part of the bylaws that the consultant admits to doing:
“An outside consultant may not be involved in any on- or off-field or on- or off-court coaching activities (e.g., attending practices and meetings involving coaching activities, formulating game plans, analyzing video involving the institution’s or opponent’s team) without counting the consultant in the coaching limitations in that sport.”
While I agree that this would most likely be deemed a secondary violation, it is just another log on the fire.