Is USC football suffering from too much depth?
USC's 2007 Trojans may be revisiting one of the great debates in sports: Is it possible for a team to have too much talent?
Seems preposterous on its face, and Pete Carroll said so.
"That's crazy," USC's football coach said Tuesday. "No. No. That's crazy."
Then posing as his own interlocutor, he said, "How good do you want to be?" "We only want to be this good." And then he walked away, apparently satisfied he had put the question to rest.
But it isn't as simple a concept as it appears.
Not when your team is in the rare position of having so many gifted athletes that nearly every position on the depth chart looks like a blue-chip logjam. Not when you lose two all-everything recruits in a matter of days, including sophomore tailback Emanuel Moody - who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated the same week he said he was transferring.
Not when elite players with egos swollen enough to encompass NFL plans (not just aspirations) find themselves scraping for playing time with the latest class of USC super-freshmen.
Five consecutive recruiting classes ranked among the top five in college football have left the top-ranked Trojans awash with prep all-Americans.
To the point that probably a half-dozen USC linebackers could start for any team in the country.
And maybe that many tailbacks. And safeties. And cornerbacks, too.
Even at quarterback, where John David Booty is The Man for this season, can the Trojans keep Mark Sanchez, Mitch Mustain and Aaron Corp happy when only one of them gets to succeed John David Booty next fall?
You can't help but wonder if the program would be better off with a few less star players and a few more role players.
There's quality depth, and then there's quality overkill, and the upheaval of guys bailing on the program.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of USC's five-year, 59-6 rampage has been just how rare player defections have been. Even as this and that Mr.All-World Super Prep found himself marginalized.
Then came the Moody shocker. Followed by the departure/dismissal (depends on your source) of receiver Jamere Holland (Taft of Woodland Hills).
Suddenly, USC's staff seemed to realize it couldn't corner the world market on college football talent and not risk losing some of it to jealous raiders. Or to the frustrations of under-used kids.
Apparently alarmed, Carroll this week talked to sophomore Shareece Wright on the basis of a rumor that Wright, too, was contemplating a transfer. In this case, away from USC's talent-glutted cornerback battles.
Wright said Carroll's approach surprised him. After conceding the idea of transferring had crossed his mind.
Carroll also warned his players about "outsiders" who might try to talk them into leaving USC.
The spasm of transfer talk/action has brought the issue to the forefront for perhaps the first time in Carroll's tenure. As perhaps was inevitable, given his program's recruiting successes.
"Hey, I could transfer." That thought must be crossing the minds of lots of Trojans whose medium-range plans include a lucrative stint in the NFL - but currently are running third on the USC depth chart.
What, indeed, keeps players at USC when they have to be thinking "I could go anyplace else and be an every-down player?" (Which apparently was exactly what Moody mulled before the program's second-leading 2006 rusher dropped his bombshell.)
Senior defensive tackle Sedrick Ellis pondered USC's holding power.
"No. 1 is winning games," the third-year starter said. "No. 2 is the ability to get to the next level from USC.
"And No. 3 might be the camaraderie you have around here with other players. I don't think it's like any other schools. We're really close on this team."
The word "competition" comes up a lot, too. Presumably a concept hammered home by USC coaches.
"Keeping me here is competing, and love for the game," said Allen Bradford, a sophomore seemingly at risk of disappearing in the nine-man-deep tailback scrum. "I ain't ever gonna walk away from football and quit because there's too much competition. That's why I'm an athlete, because I love to compete."
Yet Bradford, recruited to play defense, moved to tailback last August, later shifted to fullback and then back to tailback, concedes he doesn't know how much he would play, if at all, if the Trojans opened their season today.
He insists he is at USC for the duration. "I'm not going to leave. My dad told me to `Be patient and you'll get your chance,' so that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to keep working hard while I'm here."
That hints at perhaps Carroll's greatest hold on his players: A sense that his system is fair, and that the best player plays. And it also reminds us that recruiters play to the considerable vanity of prep football stars: If you are as good as you and I think you are, your time will come. Sooner rather than later.
Carroll did concede, Tuesday, that "managing expectations" of his players is a primary concern of his.
"Worry about it? I worry about it constantly," he said. "I think that's a real central theme in our program is how to understand where we are, what we're all about, how it fits into the national scene and all that."
He said unrealistic expectations can "eat you up. It's happened to some teams and programs over the years, in all sports, not just in college football. I'm hoping that we're learning how to (manage expectations) better than anyone has ever done it."
It would appear their learning curve on the topic is being tested. Are Moody and Holland exceptions to the stick-it-out-with-Pete rule? Or the start of an exodus to a distant promised land of playing time?
Maybe a day will, in fact, come when Pete Carroll wishes he had a little less talent. Enough to go play. Not so much that some of it is always getting ready to leave.
[More at www.dailynews.com ]
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