In this week’s Couch Commentary column, Leaky Pipes wonders: with all the mental mistakes and letdown games, is USC a poorly coached football game? 

Bad coaching is obscene.  I’m not referring to Stan Van Gundy’s freaky similarities to Ron Jeremy or that book Phil Jackson wrote about tantric.  No, what I’m actually referring to is the struggle the Supreme Court had trying to define “obscenity”—it’s not that dissimilar from the struggle we as fans have trying to define what bad coaching looks like.  In 1964, in an office-setting that I’m picturing to be something straight out of Mad Men, the Supreme Court eventually settled on Justice Stewart’s definition: “I know it when I see it.”  What it lacks in clarity it makes up for in simplicity.  Nowadays they could just my internet history as the definition, but fans still can’t agree on a concrete definition of what bad coaching looks like.  As a result, we all have wildly different views of who is a good coach, and who isn’t.  And to some of you this might seem as absurd as telling you Christine Hendricks has A cups, but I know bad coaching when I see it: and USC is poorly coached.

Yes, that USC.  The LA football monopoly.  Play at the Coliseum, two National Championships, won 87 of their last 98 games, coached by Pete Carroll…They’re kinda a big deal.  And that makes Pete Carroll kinda a big deal too.  Well, that’s an understatement.  It has made Pete Carroll a God, or at least something like a cross between Vince Lombardi and Moses.  And let me just say this now: I like Pete Carroll.  I follow him on Twitter, I love his work with A Better LA, I love the profile pieces that detail his hyper-competitive attitude.  People with that attitude are usually arrogant jerks (heard any good Hall of Fame speeches lately?) but with Pete there’s a positive frame of mind that says that he’s not out to beat you because of some perceived slight, he wants to beat you just because you’re what’s there.  Anyway, all of that is just to try to assure the angry Trojan fans that this isn’t some hatchet job aimed at discrediting Carroll (although, I am still expecting your venom in my email.)

Instead we need to get past the personalities involved and began to seriously question whether USC’s success actually shows that they are a well-coached team.  It’s a fundamental question: does winning automatically mean your coaches are doing their jobs well?  And Southern Cal has won.  A lot.  They have won about 87% of their games, they have won the Pac-10 for 7 straight years, and were it not for a certain Burnt-Orange headcase they would have won 7 straight BCS bowl games (instead they have won 6 of 7 including the last 3 Rose Bowls by an average of 20 points.)  These are facts.  These are indisputable.  The other thing that’s nearly indisputable is that every year they are one of the most talented teams in the NCAA; they consistently have the deepest and most talented teams (ask Matt Cassel how hard it is just to crack SC’s starting lineup.)  And since they are gifted, is it possible that all that talent has simply been overcoming their lackluster coaching?

If I’m going to stick with the ‘I know it when I see it’ defense for the Trojans being poorly coached, I might as well tell you what “it” is that I see.  I personally believe that coaches are responsible for three aspects: inspiration, preparation, and discipline. 

When it comes to discipline, I immediately look at how penalized a team is.  Name a penalty, and I’ll tell you why it’s the coaches fault.  Some are obvious (Delay of game, illegal formation)  Others- Offensive holding, defensive pass interference- come when the coaches didn’t put the players into places they could succeed, instead those players had to try and compensate for being out of position.  Some penalties should always fall on the player.  Personal fouls, those are a player’s fault.  But to me, those types of flags are lack of discipline- which, again, I put squarely on the shoulders on the coaches. 

So where does USC rank in fewest penalties?  96^th (out of 150 DI teams). There are only 2 teams in the Top 25 that are worse.  SC gets nearly 8 penalties a game and I think the Trojan coaching staff needs to be held accountable for the 70-plus yards a game that costs them.  This past weekend they had a 20 point lead in the 4^th quarter over Notre Dame.  They nearly blew that lead, thanks in part to 5 personal foul penalties in the fourth quarter alone.  In fact while Notre Dame was trying to tie the game, USC had two personal fouls just in the final minute.  While USC was supposed to be cool, calm, and experienced, playing against the Dead-Weis-Walkings, Notre Dame ended up looking like the team that had been there before.  USC escaped, but the lack of discipline is a huge problem. 

Another key component of coaching is preparation.  What you define that as is up to you, but to me I look at 3^rd downs.  Play-calling is the most obvious of coaching responsibilities and dialing up the right play on 3^rd down is the most telling factor of how good a play-caller you have.  So where does SC rank in 3^rd Down Conversions?  104^th. Is this in part to Barkley being a freshman?  Absolutely.  Will they be better in future years as he progresses?  Hopefully.  But the bottom line is that SC should be competing with Florida (7^th in the country on 3^rd down) and instead SC is neck-and-neck with UCLA (105^th.)  Some people look at turnover margin- the discipline of holding onto the ball or for your defense, going after the ball, is huge- but SC barely cracked the Top 80 in Turnover Margin.  There’s no denying this team can find a way to win, but throughout the game when it matters most, statistically speaking, USC does not do well. 

But since we all agree that wins and losses are the most important thing, let’s look at SC’s loses the last 4 years.  In 2006 they lose to Oregon State (whose record at the time was 4-3.) In 2007 to Stanford (whose record at the time was 1-3.)  In 2008, to Oregon State again (whose record at the time was 1-2.)  This year they lost to U. of Washington (whose record at the time was 1-1.)  Is anyone going to say that any of those teams are/were better than SC?  I don’t think so.  So why did the Trojans lose each of those games?  Because they made mental mistakes, because they weren’t ready for their opponent, because they took their opponent too lightly?  Each and all of those fall squarely on the coaches.  In today’s college football you can’t afford to screw up once, and yet every season USC loses a game they were fully capable of winning.  Pete Carroll’s an inspiring guy, so why do his teams always lose (at least) one game that they should have won because they just seem uninspired? 

Again, University of Southern California is the pinnacle of success on the West Coast for the last seven years.  In fact, even a team like Florida would probably like some of SC’s consistency.  But while Pete Carroll is being canonized, we need to stop and ask ourselves if he is as good as we think he is.  We need to stop and wonder if SC’s lack of discipline, if their losses against vastly inferior foes, if the problems that winning sweeps under the rug, if all of these things are bigger than we realize and if they all fall squarely on the Trojan coaching staff.  This year USC is currently ranked 4^th despite all the flaws.  And for schools like TCU, Cincinnati, and Boise State, schools that have worked hard, are currently undefeated, and yet they still can’t overtake the Trojans in the voting, well there’s only one word for that:  obscene.  Is USC as good as those schools?  Is USC a Championship-caliber team?  I’ll believe it when I see it.