Seattle offering "exorbitant" money to Carroll
Posted by Mike Florio on January 8, 2010 4:08 PM ET
With the Seattle Seahawks dumping coach Jim Mora and pursuing Pete Carroll, Jay Glazer of FOX reports that the Seahawks are offering the USC coach an "exorbitant" amount of money.
It's not a bad development for Carroll, given that no one since the Dolphins post-Saban and the Falcons post-Petrino have seriously pursued Carroll.
And that's what makes this development even more amazing. Carroll's stock has dropped, along with the stock of college coaches generally. None have succeeded at the NFL level since former Miami coach Jimmy Johnson led the Cowboys to back-to-back NFL titles -- and former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer parlayed his Jim Caldwell role into another one.
Thus, the thinking was that the NFL had abandoned the college-to-NFL career path.
Still, it's pointing in that direction. ESPN now reports that some of the "power brokers" at USC (Will Ferrell?) have reached out to Oregon State coach Mike Riley. (We also think Jags coach Jack Del Rio would be a candidate, too.) As a result, Chris Mortensen of ESPN says it would be a "surprise" if Carroll doesn't take the job.
And if Carroll quickly becomes the next coach of the Seahawks, the Seahawks might need to keep some extra money around to pay the fine for violating the Rooney Rule, if no minority candidate is willing to interview for the job -- and if the Seahawks didn't have the foresight to interview an in-house candidate before firing Mora and letting the Carroll cat out of the bag.
Vikings coordinator Leslie Frazier already has declined an opportunity to interview; Glazer suggests that other minority candidates have said "no thanks," too.
In this regard, it's not enough to ask a minority coach to be interviewed; the interview has to occur. In 2003, Lions assistant Sherm Lewis refused to participate in a sham session when it was obvious that CEO Matt Millen planned to hire Steve Mariucci. So the Lions interviewed no minority candidates -- and Millen was fined $200,000.
The league thereafter promised to impose even bigger fines for future violations. The Seahawks may be in line for such an outcome. But the team might simply regard the penalty as a cost of doing business.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com...ey-to-carroll/