Maybe Pete Carroll will rip off several more championships in the coming years and render this entry moot, but consider:

After going on one of the more epic (short-term) runs in all of college football history, USC has now lost three of its last 14 games.  By itself that fact tells of a team playing at a high level of football.  But it’s also a distinctive separation from USC’s celebrated mini-run the last several years.

There were many reasons for USC’s success these last few years but two were fairly critical: Pete Carroll ran the defense, Norm Chow ran the offense.  Carroll is simply one of the finest defensive minds anywhere and is the co-Godfather – along with Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin – of the 4-3/cover two/Tampa Two defense so vogue in professional football.  The guy knows how to run a great defense that stops the run, slows offenses down, plays fast and forces turnovers.

In a stroke of genius he hired Norm Chow to be his offensive coordinator in 2001.  I don’t mean to lionize the man but he’s one of college football’s greatest offensive coordinators.  Combined, the two coaches assembled top ten units on both sides of the ball and made playing USC particularly vexing.

The two parted ways after the 2004 championship season and USC’s offense went on a tear in 2005.  However, the formula had been changed and what was once an offense directed by an elite coach instead leaned on bright but young coaches who more closely associated with coach Carroll’s ideas of how an offense should run.  Gone was a lot of the presnap motion, formation shifts, funky looks and unusual tendencies for a more mundane (yet complicated) pro-style offense.

It worked in 2005 when USC had an overwhelming talent edge with Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart and LenDale White and 10 returning starters to its offense, but things have returned to the mean since.  In fact it appears as if the talent underachieved last year.  While the USC defense was able to return to dominance after a shaky 2005, the offense became more predictable and less able to control the trenches and dictate outcomes in obvious pass and run situations.

USC’s offensive coaching hydra was unusual and perhaps telling of the eventual decline.  To this day I have no idea who did what among Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian and Pete Carroll.  I hunch it was Carroll’s effort to muddy the waters and shelter from criticism his young co-coordinators.  Kiffin’s departure and Sarkisian’s ascent clarifies the situation greatly but it is still Pete Carroll’s offense and newspaper stories this spring told of an offensive scheme and approach nearly unchanged since last year.

This isn’t an intent to slam the USC offense.  They were able to put up 30 points/game last year in spite of possession-eating clock rules, NFL departures, injuries and youth at the tailback position.  However, USC has "lost the initiative" to borrow a thought from my friend HeismanPundit.  They’ve settled for an offense more reliant upon talent to win the day than before and unlike previous years the talent hasn’t delivered as often.  In fact, it took a Steve Smith bailout effort against Washington State from adding a third loss last year.  The bottom line is that a game’s outcome more often becomes more reliant upon luck or a great individual performance instead of USC’s own approach simply removing chance from the equation.

I mentioned Florida State up above because USC’s trajectory might end up quite similar.  Florida State went on a run from 1987 until 1999 that saw them finish no further than fourth in the polls.  But they could only win two national championships during that time, missing out on the opportunity to establish their run as the greatest in college football history.  It was incredibly successful, yes, but not wholesale dominance.

As Pete Carroll and his defense is the constant, the rock for USC, Mickey Andrews and his defense are the rock for Florida State.  Both could be expected to produce at a high level with remarkably similar levels of talent on their sides of the ball.  But the difference-maker for each school would be on offense where these teams could elevate themselves as either almost good enough versus being a champion.

Florida State’s "fast break" offense helped them earn their first championship in 1993 under quarterback Charlie Ward and several subsequent flirtations in the following years.  That eventually gave way to Mark Richt’s more vertical offense.  That too would help them to a championship in 1999 after several near-titles the previous few years.

With Richt’s departure the Florida State offense fell into decline and the team’s fate is well evident today.  Mickey Andrews is still around and doing a hell of a job like always, but that great run ended when the decision was made to become more predictable and less aggressive on offense.

All of which takes me to my initial question, is USC going the way of Florida State?  I don’t know, but last season’s play suggests they’ve taken a turn away from dominance and innovation and are emphasizing maintenance instead.  Pete Carroll’s still around to keep that defense humming (same as Andrews) but the other side of the ball might be hurting.  They may win another championship or two or place high in the polls like always, but that chance to be the undisputed face of an era is slipping away.

Was an opportunity lost when Chow departed in not hiring a coordinator who was more unpredictable?  Kiffin and Sarkisian clearly owed something to Carroll with their initial hirings (Sarkisian was plucked out of an obscure coaching job at a California JUCO and Kiffin is Carroll’s Godson, hired away from a low level job with the NFL’s Jaguars).  Things may have gotten too incestual much like the Jeff/Bobby Bowden situation at Florida State.

Again, I don’t know.  I simply see some similarities (yay alliteration) between the two and scratch my head at that awful question for both: "what might have been?"