Pete Carroll's Lasting USC Legacy: His Impact Beyond Football

He was in the middle of it long before Colin Kaepernick, Megan Rapinoe or any other athlete making a stand.

He did it while transforming lost college football royalty and a football-starved pro sports city, and by diving directly into the belly of difficult social justice conversations that could no longer be ignored. All more than 10 years ago.

Pete Carroll is back in Los Angeles this weekend. And football shouldn't be the only story.

"He is so much more than that," former USC quarterback Matt Barkley said.

It would be easy to focus on Carroll's wins and championships at USC, and the Hollywood feel of it all with celebrities dotting the sidelines. Or the players he sent to the NFL and the Heisman Trophies he added to Heritage Hall. Or even the way he left town, just ahead of an NCAA posse that eventually blew up the program and left it a shell of its former elite self for infractions committed during the Carroll regime.

But when Carroll shows up at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Sunday with a different team (Seattle Seahawks) from a different league (NFL) to play the Rams in their first home game since returning to Los Angeles, the idea of what was real in his nine seasons at USC will be glossed over again.

Sometimes you only find what's important when you reach the other side and hear the other voice.

"[The Rams] are in position to do a tremendous amount of goodwill work in an area that needs it desperately," Carroll said during his press conference earlier this week. "We were down there trying to do stuff, and it was hard because there's just so many people. It was so big; it was hard to make an impact."

But those who truly know Carroll, who see beyond the X's and O's on the surface of his coaching life, know what he accomplished away from the field at USC.

They see a man who fed off the energy of learning and understanding inner-city challenges, where life changes in a blink and dreams are distant on the horizon. The same man who created nonprofit organizations in both Los Angeles (A Better LA) and Seattle (A Better Seattle) focusing on reducing and preventing youth and gang violence.

A Better Los Angeles actually uses former gang members as community intervention specialists.

The same man who, in 2008, figured out a way to get the LAPD, the L.A. County Sheriff and the mayor of the city together in his tiny, crowded office at USC to iron out a plan to facilitate what was eventually called L.A. Live Peace.

There was too much violence on the streets of inner-city L.A., and someone had to take a stand.

So they put together a march for peace, a rally to bring awareness to the senseless violence and a chance for all involved to embrace common ground. Cars were backed up for miles on the 110 Freeway on that August day, and thousands marched down Martin Luther King Boulevard all the way into the Coliseum, just blocks from the USC campus.

"It's not that difficult to change," Carroll said that day while addressing the crowd in the Coliseum. "It's one person at a time."

"He would drive to work every day and hear about people getting killed day after day," said Yogi Roth, the co-author of Carroll's book, Win Forever, and a former assistant coach of his at USC. "He got those officials together in his office and asked, 'Why can't we do this in the community? Why do we have so many people pulling different ways? Why can't we make this happen?'"

This is the world according to Pete. Everyone can be reached. No one should be forgotten.

Not the star quarterback and his $50 million contract or the walk-on who's barely getting by. Not the well-to-do in Rolling Hills, not those living minute by minute just steps outside the USC campus.

When he arrived at USC in 2001, he couldn't understand how a once-proud institution was failing to reach its potential. The Rams and Raiders left the city seven years earlier, cratering the once-proud football town and leaving an opening for USC to seize control of the football market.

But somehow the Trojans, synonymous with all that's hip in L.A. throughout their dynamic history, lost their mojo.

It was, Carroll said, the spirit of Troy. And it was 20 years gone.

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Then the guy who hadn't coached in more than a year, and hadn't coached in college since he was defensive coordinator for Pacific in 1983, rolled into L.A. with this notion of "win forever." Hell, they'd have been happy to beat Washington State.

"When they bang on your head and tell you you're not a winner year after year, you start to believe it," former USC assistant Ed Orgeron said.

That could've been said about life outside the pristine campus of USC, plopped in the middle of the rough streets of South Central Los Angeles.

Coaching and creating change on and off the field was the easy part. Reaching out to the community and listening was the heavy lifting.

Countless times over the next eight years, Carroll would hop in his car and find himself driving through uncertain and unpredictable neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Not to recruit players, but to have serious conversations. To understand what was wrong and why there was so much violence and despair.

One night, while standing under a dimly lit streetlight on yet another dangerous corner after yet another long conversation—and long after the transition was complete and USC was on top of the college football world—Roth reminded Carroll that it was his birthday. What in the world was he doing out there?

"He's not afraid to have awkward conversations," Roth said. "Why doesn't his message get old? Because it has depth. 'I'm going to care about you as much as I possibly can and do everything in my power to tap into you and make you the best you can be.'"

Be it on the football field winning championships or at the intersection of desperate and hopeless under a dim streetlight.

Years ago in the mid-2000s, when USC had found itself under Carroll, the central focus was the way the team competed at practice. The way each player made every other player the best they could be.

The practices were legendary, many harder than actual games. There was Tell The Truth Monday and Competition Tuesday and Turnover Wednesday and No Repeat Thursday—all thriving on individual and team competition.

Carroll used to love to explain the origin of the word "compete," detailing the Latin root of the word for anyone who would listen.

To strive together; to strive in common, to come together.

Not unlike what he preached all those nights on those South Central street corners.

"It was just a treasure. There's still a connection," Carroll said of his time at USC. "It was that deep of an experience there with the fans, the school, the community."

Welcome back, Pete.

Football might be the story, but it's not what's important.

Bleacher Report contributor Matt Hayes is a veteran college football reporter whose experience includes more than 15 years at Sporting News. You can follow him on Twitter at @MattHayesCFB.