Matt Leinart is no longer the baby-faced quarterback leading USC to national championships.
During a phone interview this summer, the 39-year-old who now works as a college football analyst for Fox was driving between appointments while trying to keep his kids quiet in the car. He could have said it wasn’t a good time, but he didn’t want to put this off.
“Buddy,” he told his son in the backseat, “hold on.”
Leinart would multitask if it meant reliving the glory days of USC, which for too long have felt like a distant memory. In fact, he wondered if he had enough time to cover everything: Pete Carroll’s arrival late in 2000 and the unique ways he won over players and changed their mentality, the stars such as Reggie Bush he brought into the program, and the steady climb in confidence and wins — followed closely by championships and ticket requests from celebrities.
ESPN reached out to a number of former players, coaches and staff from Carroll’s USC teams to better understand what took place and how it might provide a roadmap for new coach Lincoln Riley. Leinart was the first of many calls, and as fate would have it, he said he was recently speaking to a friend about this exact topic.
On the face of it, Leinart explained, the two coaches are not alike. Carroll is a big personality who loves the mental side of sports, while Riley is more reserved, content to revel in X’s and O’s. But what they inherited is the same: a sleeping giant. When Carroll took the USC job, the Trojans had missed a bowl game in four out of five seasons. For Riley, it’s three out of four.
“It was eerily similar to when Pete took over,” Leinart said. “Because the mindset was like, ‘Oh, there’s good players, good talent. But, man, like, these kids don’t know how to win. They weren’t developed or they weren’t coached the right way or whatever it may be.'”
Leinart covered Riley at Oklahoma and has visited him since he got to USC. And he said he’s seen a shared mentality with Carroll just…
Source : espn
