Sportandfashion-news Super Bowl Preview: 2.) Pete Carroll's Rare Opportunity for Greatness

Yes, Super Bowl week is finally here. We will be sick of everything by Friday night yelling PLAY THE DAMN GAME, but it is only right to be excited about it for the first couple days. As we have done in years past, we will be numbering our Super Bowl coverage and then posting a big link dump on Saturday so you have it all at your fingertips before the big game. 

Pete Carroll is an oddity. He is not the usual head coach in National Football League as he went from being an NFL coach twice in the 1990's to an extremely successful at USC where Carroll won a National Championship, made another National Championship appearance and won or shared six Pac-12 titles. He moved to the NFL where he is trying to be the first coach to win a Super Bowl and National Championship since the days of Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson. With a young team, Carroll might be poised to become of the greatest all-around coaches in football history.

There is a great and wonderful 'what if' when it comes to Johnson and Switzer. With Johnson, he had a fight with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones causing him to step down after winning back-to-back Super Bowls. With that Dallas team in place, Johnson could have won two more championships in the mid-90's and maybe one more putting him into another echelon of coaches. Johnson did well in his second NFL head coaching stint with Miami Dolphins getting them to the playoffs three of the four years, but he had an aging Dan Marino and an aging roster. Johnson bolted once he saw this team would be heading towards a rebuilding phase. Miami has not recovered fully since which is bizarre to think about as Johnson last coached in 1999.

Like Johnson, Switzer is in this special fraternity as he had a National Championship with Oklahoma and a Super Bowl title with Dallas. Switzer was only 60 years old when he stepped down from being Dallas' head coach. But like Johnson in Miami a couple years later, Switzer saw the writing on the wall with an aging Cowboys plus an owner resting on the laurels of the old Cowboys team. If Jones rebuilt the Cowboys say more like what Green Bay did with Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, who knows how Switzer gets remembered, but I am certain he is not known as the college coach that rode Jimmy's coattails.

 Neither Johnson nor Switzer had the road paved with gold like Carroll does right now with Seattle and their organization. If you want a good example of this, read NFL.com's Gregg Rosenthal's column on Monday about how this team is built for the long-term. Dynasty talk is a little foolish when the team has yet to win a Super Bowl. We can have the conversation if Seattle wins on Sunday, and it puts Carroll in perfect position to rule the roost in the coaching circles for at least the next half decade. The weird thing is this could put Carroll in complete rarefied air that we have yet to see in the NFL making this whole thing completely fascinating.

If you look at all of the NFL coaching greats, none of them have the resume like Carroll with the conference titles and the National Championship. Even Johnson does not really compare as he only spend four years with Miami versus Carroll's eight-year tenure. Furthermore Miami was an independent when Johnson coached there meaning Johnson does not carry the same accolades as Carroll.  If he can win multiple titles with Seattle, Carroll could become one of the best to ever coach the game of football which is a crazy thing to think about honestly given how much Carroll struggled as an NFL coach in the 90's.

The final part of this odyssey with Carroll is if it were not for Reggie Bush getting in trouble with the NCAA, and the NCAA still running things like an organized crime unit (They still are but not as strong, whatever), Carroll would probably be somewhere else in the NFL or continuing to build a legacy at USC. Everyone believed Pete wanted to get back to the NFL and picked an opportune time to leave with everything collapsing at Southern Cal but if that did not happen, I still think he leaves at some point in the not too distant future. But Carroll would not be with Seattle. He would not have a 'Pete Carroll coaching tree' which started with Gus Bradley and will likely continue with Darrell Bevell and Dan Quinn. He also would not be in control of the one of the youngest and most talented teams in the NFL. Who knows if Carroll gets his NFL redemption somewhere else.

When the game begins, a graphic will show up on FOX's broadcast about Carroll being only the third coach to lead a college and pro team to the championship game. It makes him a better coach than Nick Saban. Same goes for Steve Spurrier.  The jury is still out on Chip Kelly, but for now, Carroll stands alone with a couple people trying to emulate him in the coming years.

Charlie.