Yeah, yeah, it did. I mean, there's something about the college game and I write about this in the book, too. I mean, there's there's the games themselves are kind of defined in when they're played. Right. So like the high school Friday Night Lights has this sort of real release end of the week kind of deal.
The NFL is on Sunday, which is can be a little bit of a bleak day. Oh, my God, I got I got work on Monday, you know, kind of thing. So you're kind of just lounging around the couch. But Saturday is this incredible. I mean, college games are on the most the best day of the weekend. Right.
You're listening to The Brian D. O'Leary Show, your sanctuary for serious content in an unserious culture.
Today, we're heading back into the wild heart of college football in the early 2000s.
Joined by Monty Burke, New York Times bestselling author of Men of Troy, The Epic Afternoons, Wild Nights, and Enduring Legacy of Pete Carroll's USC Trojans.
And that's from Grand Central Publishing out January 13th, 2026.
We get into how a so-called failed NFL coach turned USC into a Hollywood-sized dynasty and how it all came crashing down.
Before we dive in, if you're a writer or creator who wants to build a real business of your own around your newsletter,
head over to O'LearyWriters.com where you can grab my Substack Success Blueprint.
It's a 31-page no-fluff guide to growing your list and turning it into a sustainable, profitable publication.
And without further ado, here's our interview with Monty Burke.
All right, today we have Monty Burke with us.
He recently released a book called Meta Troy,
the epic afternoons,
wild nights and enduring legacy of Pete Carroll's USC Trojans.
And it was published by grand central publishing January 13th,
2026 last week as we're talking here.
So Monty also wrote Saban making of a coach released in 2016,
written several books and innumerable essays about fly fishing.
And as I was telling Monty a second ago,
I'm a big college football fan and a former professional in the fly fishing
industry in a former life. So we have a lot of common interests. But today, we're here to talk
about Menetroy. Monty, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you bet. First of all, I
want to just talk about folks who haven't read perhaps some of your other works and your full
story and where you grew up. I grew up kind of all over the place. I was born in the Northeast,
but the majority of my childhood was in Alabama. So, you know, I actually was so was lucky enough.
The Crimson Tide used to play in Birmingham, which is where I lived. And my grandfather was
a drinking buddy of Bear Bryant's, which was not a unique designation in Alabama at that time.
But so I would go to, you know, games at Legion Field and saw, you know, Alabama, Notre Dame,
Alabama, Kentucky, all these great games.
So that really got me into college football.
From that point on, I've just been eaten up with college football.
Okay.
And so it was mostly Alabama.
And somewhat itinerant childhood, but moving around, mold you in any way?
College football?
Yeah.
I mean, what's funny is the Northeast doesn't have a very good college football heritage.
Hang on.
Hang on. I went to Boston College.
Except for Boston College.
Yeah, there we go.
Literally, it's except for Boston College.
I mean, you know, it does way back in the day, right?
If you go away.
Oh, yeah.
We're sort of the, you know, that was the pinnacle of the sport way back in the day.
But and one thing that was kind of fun in a minute, Troy, I spend a little time in one chapter talking about the sort of how college football started.
And it did start here in the Northeast and started Princeton and Rutgers with the first game.
And then, you know, it kind of went down south and then it had its own sort of manifest destiny.
You know, it went out West and the sort of anchor school out West was USC, but just, you know, in terms of childhood, you know, I always, I was kind of more of an NFL nut when I was up here, uh, up here being the Northeast.
And then, you know, down South people don't in Alabama, particularly they don't care much.
I mean, they'd still like pro football, but it's all about the Crimson Tide and all about the Tigers.
You know what I mean?
That's, that's, that's pretty much it.
Yeah.
I have family down there and yeah, it's, uh, you know, it, you know, until what the nineties there was, uh, there was the Falcons.
was the only school, maybe the Redskins,
if you identified them as a team of the South.
It's bizarre because Atlanta is only two hours away from Birmingham,
so you would think there would be more Falcons fans there.
I found there would be more Steelers fans there.
It was a steel town like Pittsburgh was,
so I think there's a lot of transplants and a lot of heritage there.
Interesting, but it's all about the tide, really.
Yeah, and then you mentioned you grew up in Vermont,
I ended up at Middlebury college and did you be,
do you want to become a writer then or not?
I did. I did. I really, I really did. I mean,
I didn't have necessarily the cojones to kind of follow that path right away,
but you know, it took me a couple of years,
but I did absolutely always want to be a writer.
I always loved three things.
I think we're kind of preeminent. My life was, you know,
fly fishing football and writing and writing slash reading,
put that in one category.
Yeah. And I think maybe we can talk about fly fishing.
and another day I want to talk again
Men of Troy here today.
So college football sounds like it became an obsession
or at least a major interest as a child.
Yeah, it did.
I mean, there's something about the college game
and I write about this in the book too.
The games themselves are kind of defined
in when they're played, right?
So like the high school Friday Night Lights
has this sort of real release,
end of the week kind of deal.
The NFL is on Sunday,
which can be a little bit of a bleak day. Oh my God, I got, I got work on Monday, you know,
kind of thing. So you're kind of just lounging around the couch. But Saturday is this incredible,
I mean, college games are on the most, the best day of the weekend, right? You have a day of
recovery in the other side of it. You have students at the game, you have bands, you have alums coming
back to the place where they probably spent the best four years of their lives. So there's this
incredible atmosphere to college games, even when you're, you know, especially when they're
stadium but even on tv there's like a different the orally so sound wise it's very different you
know it's got the always has the bands and they always like you know pan to the student section
students seem to be more emotive than uh uh you know nfl fans you know they're like they're
on their on their fingernails and they're you know they're kind of hanging on every play so
always that to me has always been really fascinating how how different the games are
kind of depend on when they when they're played yeah and you know i grew up in portland oregon
And, you know, we had the Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State Beavers.
But in the 80s, those teams were awful.
They were awful.
And we, you know, we followed, or at least I did, Division II Portland State Vikings who were great.
And so the whole idea of college football and going to that stadium was raucous.
You go down to Eugene or Corvallis, it was gloomy and dismal.
But we watched on Saturday.
They always had the big games.
So, of course, USC, Notre Dame, Penn State, and the aforementioned Boston College, not on TV too much, but a Heisman Trophy winner that took Alabama to the woodshed at one point.
They were in that awesome game against Miami, that's for sure. I remember watching it.
Yes, absolutely. So, yeah. But you so you wrote a biography about 10 years ago about Nick Saban.
And this was there was more of a biography than this book you have right now.
The book you have out Men of Troy right now is really a snapshot.
It is somewhat a biography of Pete Carroll, but it's really a snapshot of the period when Pete Carroll was at UC.
Um, yeah. So I think what, I want to ask, what is it about these coaches or coaches in general
that keep pulling you back to these biographical sketches or even total projects? So again,
I love college football, but, but to me, college football coaches are some of the most interesting
kind of figures in American society, right? I mean, they're, they, they have to be so many
different things at once. They, you know, have to be great recruiters. They have to be sort of
psychologists, they have to be teachers. They're sort of like military leaders.
You know, they're the bigger programs, they're media celebrities. And, you know,
college football coaches have to speak to the media, you know, unlike the CEO of JP Morgan.
Now, these guys are during the season are talking to the media. They're very accountable, right?
Three or four times a week. They're in front of the media answering questions. So, you know,
that always, I mean, they're basically CEOs of medium-sized companies. So, and also in college
football, they have a lot more control than they do to the typical coach in the NFL. I mean,
they are kind of the functioning GM as well. Um, so, you know, these guys have always,
have always interested me and, and, you know, the, the obsession that they have for, uh,
the game and for the little meticulous details that go into, you know, creating a great team
and creating a great staff and, and a player development, all that sort of stuff is always
just truly, truly fascinating to me. And the, you know, whole thing about the, about Pete Carroll's
that era, that nine-year era, which really they haven't, you know, it still endures to this day,
really, because they haven't really recovered from the sanctions that happened at the end of it. But
that nine-year era, you know, college football is, for the most part, a game of small towns,
small-ish towns, small to medium towns, we call them, Tuscaloosa State College, you know, with
the exception of Boston College and Miami, stuff like that. There are not many that are in cities,
Right. And USC was at that time during that era was in Los Angeles and there were no NFL teams there.
So they were the only NFL thing in town or the only football kind of game in town.
And that aside from UCLA, but they started winning and they attracted all these, you know, celebrities and business people from L.A.
Which who love winners. Right. They're totally attracted to winners.
And, you know, you had people like Snoop Dogg and Will Ferrell and the Fonz and Arnold, you know, like not not just going to games.
This is practice. You know, it's like crazy. I was talking to this. I interviewed this punter.
Which is no longer allowed after reading toward the end of your book, or maybe it is again.
Yeah, they don't allow it. And most coaches don't don't want what was interesting about Carroll. He didn't care.
He didn't care if a scout from the other team was there. He's like, we're going to beat you anyway.
You can all our plays doesn't really matter. And he was right for a long period there for they won 34 games in a row.
But, you know, it just was so interesting. I was interviewing this the punter and he would he talked about, like, you know, practicing his punts and looking over like three feet away from him.
And there was Snoop Dogg standing there. So it became this kind of like crazy vibe thing that was going on.
And of course it became an incredible recruiting advantage A couple of the guys I talked to said you know I went to you know to go visit the campus on my recruiting visit and I met Snoop Dogg
And like, you know, you're probably going to go to USC if Snoop Dogg comes and gives you a high
five, you know, during your recruiting visit. So it just was this era. I felt like, you know,
then the NFL teams came back and it just was this era. I think that it never happened before
where a team had like totally captured a city, a city of that size and will never happen again.
because of the sanctions, because of the way the college football is now,
because they have two teams there now. I mean, you know,
two NFL teams there now. So to me, that was what's fat.
That was what's kind of fascinating about that, that one nine year stretch there.
Yeah. Unique, unique time in college football for sure.
So USC let's for everybody who is listening or they,
they should know that what USC has been a national power for well over a
century. And there were some down times for sure that you mentioned in the book, but really with
John McKay, they built this program back up in the seventies. McKay ends up going to the Buccaneers,
you know, so on and so forth. But then John Robinson comes in seamless transition and they
went three national titles in the seventies and Robinson then goes to the Rams also in LA at the
time and it was usc was competitive they were they were good they weren't great until until carol
second year came around really um and you you yeah you you talk about right at that transition
when usc started winning these national titles 72 i think was the first one um in that era you
talk about the modern, what is it? The modern age of football starts in 1970. I was, I was,
I was interested in that. Well, how did you determine that as the delineation point of the,
the modern era? Is it the a hundred years after that first Princeton game?
You know, it's interesting that, that is, I don't remember the exact
source on that, but that is a widely accepted thing that the modern era of college football
started basically in 1970.
It had something to do with the formation of the conferences,
television deals, scholarships, the scholarships too.
I believe that was the year they went from unlimited
to they had some sort of limit on them, stuff like that.
It was kind of the formation of the NCAA.
Okay, so it's not the play of the game,
but it's all the machinations of how it's structured.
I was wondering about that.
Four Pass was around 1970, we know.
Well, that's that.
Yeah. And so we get in this in this era, you know, you talk about the unlimited scholarships and, you know, USC being this in L.A. and having all the glitz and glamour of L.A.
And then one of the themes throughout the book is is amateurism and what the what college football is.
My contention is that college football has never really been an amateur sport, so-called. The NCAA came in, what, 1906, 1905, somewhere in there, and established all these rules for eligibility for these players, but it's never been particularly amateur as the old Olympic standard or AAU standard might have been because these players had scholarships and we all know a lot of them are getting paid somewhat.
You want to talk a little bit about the amateurism?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, so to me, the most interesting thing, I mean, so you're right that they, you know, they had scholarships, they had a free room and board.
They, you know, got a free ride to college, which is a big deal.
I have two kids in college.
I'd love to have that right now.
And then they had a stipend, which was about $800, you know, depending on what year, was about $800 a month.
However, you've got to look at a guy and, you know, I get deeply into the scandal towards the end of the book, the Reggie Bush scandal.
Look at a guy like Reggie Bush. And this is where the amateurism model really falls apart.
Who was the best player in college football for two years. One of the best players of all time,
really, in college football. If you think about a true triple threat, you know, like
great running back, incredible receiver, an incredible returner of kicks. And, you know,
this guy just was electric. He set the whole city on fire. Right. And USC, he was making
the university gobs of money. He was making the NCAA gobs of money. He was making the NCAA's
broadcast partners gobs of money. And yet legally, he couldn't cash in on that. And so, you know,
he got caught up on it because he, you know, allegedly went out and tried to do it the other
way, you know, tried to do it under the table. And so I do think that that scandal actually resonates
and it precipitates in a way the changes that we have now in college football.
You know, the ability for these athletes to kind of, you know,
cash in on their names, images and likenesses.
And, you know, not necessarily the transfer portal,
but certainly the NIL stuff.
And, you know, to me, that was the first time,
I think especially when the NCAA came down,
if you remember the, you know, there was the Reggie Bush huge scandal
and Yahoo covered it and all the newspapers got all over it.
ESPN was all over it.
And then, you know, the NCAA came down really, really hard on USC.
Not quite the death penalty that SMU got, but certainly harder than later scandals like at Penn State, which is a horrible scandal.
And then at Miami, Ben Shapiro, also a horrible scandal.
Way harder than those guys.
They basically, USC has never really recovered.
I'll put it that way.
You know, they lost many scholarships.
They couldn't go to bowl games.
They haven't quite been nationally relevant since then.
And I think, you know, the scales kind of drop from people's eyes at this point.
Like, why? Wait a minute. You know, like what what right do we have to tell these kids that they, you know, the kids up at, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is creating Facebook at Harvard.
He gets to keep all the money, whatever he there. Right. And so, you know, it's just it's just really interesting to me.
I feel like that precipitated what we have now in college football for better.
Yeah. You talk you mentioned SMU and they did get the death penalty. You talk about going back, you know, Eric Dickerson, somehow his grandma buys him a Trans Am.
You know, that's a famous story and he won't talk about it to this day.
My contention is that some of these guys started talking too much and complaining too much about not getting their bag.
And that more or less ruined it.
You know, so getting back to SMU, you know, with Eric Dickerson and Craig James and all those guys, they were, you know, they were one of the top teams, not quite as successful as USC at this point.
But they left a couple of years later.
Their program goes on the death penalty.
And as you mentioned in the book, the sanctions that the NCAA imposes affects doesn't affect these guys that took all the money doesn't affect the coaches that can move on.
It affects the next level of kids.
And then the whole alumni base or the fan base of these schools get get torched because they didn't catch it in time or they penalized to.
I don't I don't know the answer, but you do mention that.
One of the most poignant interviews I had in there was with Matt Barkley, who was Carroll's last quarterback, freshman phenom, had to start.
Mark Janchez left early for the draft, so he had to start Carroll's last year.
He played well, didn't play great, but ended up being one of the greatest USC quarterbacks of all time.
But he was there when the sanctions came down.
And he talked about how difficult it was and how he had nothing to do with it.
He and the other 75 guys on the team, 85 guys on the team, 84 guys on the team, whatever, had nothing to do with that scandal.
Zero to do with it.
And they had to deal with it.
So they had to deal with not being able to go to bowl games, you know, literally using walk-ons, you know, sometimes in the starting lineup.
But, you know, their whole – there was no depth, right?
Every second stringer was some walk-on kid who just happened.
Oh, I played high school football.
and it used to be back in you know the days we talked about earlier john robinson but he would
he would recruit you know they'd have 10 tailbacks that would have started anywhere in the country
but they were they were in the depth you know way buried in the depth chart at usc yep yep
it can't you can't recruit well either if you're a great player why would you go to a program that
that you know is going to be decimated and can't play on tv and can't play in bowl games you know
you're not, you're not going to go there. So yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a,
it's a fascinating thing that happens.
It's really unfortunate what happens really. Cause you know,
Carol left all the other coaches left you know, get away scot-free pretty much.
You know, you say you mentioned,
you interviewed Pete Carroll seven times for the bugger sat down with him
seven times. I was wondering how,
how different he was in a one-to-one setting than the guy we see on the
sideline chomping the gum and all excited rah-rah uh he's so funny he goes in waves kind of he always
would start out kind of mellow and then and then he would get hyped up at one point and kind of and
then and then kind of come up come you know come off the crest there uh always moving of course
you know always and always moving around um but you know i found him to be incredibly insightful
because now i think he's had time to really reflect on a lot of these things and he was
hurt pretty badly you know those every everyone thought not everyone but a lot of people thought
that he left. He saw the bad things coming down. And he's pretty adamant about, like, more than
a lot of coaches who say, nah, nah, that's not the case. I think he sounded like from your
interviews, he's pretty pissed about those allegations. It's his legacy there to some
people's eyes, right? And so, you know, he vehemently denies that there are other people who,
you know, who say that, of course, he knew what was going on. Of course, he could tell from the
questions that the NCAA was asking that they were going to be in deep, deep doo-doo.
But this was also a different era than it was in the 80s after SMU. Everybody knew that there are
lines you can't cross. So you're not going to try and get away with the same schemes of SMU,
for crying out loud. That was nuts. And so you mentioned he had, was it Reggie Bush and Matt
sign affidavits six times a year. Yep. His, his compliance, his compliance guy had that. Yeah.
So just to, it was sort of like the, and everybody else is required at what, like once or twice.
Well, but most people do it before a bowl game, right. To, to kind of quantify, you know, quantify,
qualify that they're amateurs basically, but their compliance guy had them sign these things, you
know, you know, five or six times a year. Um, you know, again, they're like an honor code at the end
of a at the end of an exam basically you're you're testifying yourself it's not notarized or anything
like that that you're yeah there's there's two two things i really want to attack here as far as the
scandals and the stuff that um usc got themselves into one was the reggie bush uh whole whole thing you can read about all that and the crazy you know players and that whole deal and how nuts it was and how it like the blind leading the
blind but um the the other thing you know as far as pete carroll maintaining it i don't know if he
necessarily maintains innocence we didn't really do anything wrong the one of the things was i'm
I'm reading this. I'm like, Paul D, the University of Miami athletic director is in charge of or the chair of the NCAA committee on infractions who investigates USC.
My or Miami's president, Donna Shalala, I believe her name is, comes and talks to either Carol or some administrator at USC because they have peer reviews.
but i'm like paul d is the guy it's like the fox in charge of the hen house here
it's crazy i mean we we didn't know that at the time though right it was like not only afterward
that that it all came out that paul d was it was you know in charge with the ad at miami when the
whole nevin shapiro scandal and he had celebrate right and that happened after after the bush thing
yeah uh yeah well it came out after the bush thing yeah okay yeah yeah so it's uh it's i mean
USC fans and players and all that sort of have a right to be very angry about the way that that whole thing was handled.
You know, the committee on infractions didn't seem to be on the up and up.
They seem, you know, Carroll's right when he says to a certain degree, you know, for a long, long time,
there were competing teams, competing conferences that thought that USC had an unfair advantage because of this celebrity thing that he,
like I said before, because of the fact that Snoop Dogg would give a recruit, you know, a high five.
But UCLA didn't have it. They never did.
well you still just didn't just didn't capitalize on it um they could have had it i guess in theory
but so you know to a certain degree there was one player in there who's quoted and he says uh
you know they shut the party down and that's that's kind of what they did you know it's kind
of like they gave them enough they gave them warnings hey calm it down chill it out don't
have these you know they did have those open practices did leave them vulnerable i mean just
to a certain degree their greatest strength with was this sort of vibe and all the fun they were
having stuff like that but also became their cut their biggest weakness right it did leave them
vulnerable to agents coming and all this stuff. I mean, there's one scene in there, which I love
when the O-line coach comes down after practice one day into Heritage Hall, which is where the
football offices are. And there are all these agents in there and waiting to talk to the kids.
And he clears the room almost like in the Bible when Jesus clears the temple of the
Molders. It's like this great scene where he comes in and he's like, I see something like,
I know what a cockroach looks like. And then he clears the whole room of all these guys. So
So, you know, they did leave themselves and they were warned many times, like, you know, calm, chill it out, calm it down.
But, you know, I think at that point it kind of had a life of its own.
It was kind of, you know, could spin wherever it went, you know.
So hypothetically, Lendale White, fourth and two, runs 27 power against University of Texas in the third, potential third national championship game, which I was actually there at the beginning.
well i my friends and i we've done this thing called the bowl odyssey where we go to all these
different bowl games and we we get tickets somehow or another this game was the first one we not only
we were willing to pay several hundred dollars a ticket we just couldn't find one for sale one of
my buddies found one for sale and we had like seven of us there and we just like one guy going
like where are we going to watch the game we ended up watching an outback steakhouse in valencia but
But regardless, if he if he gets that extra six inches.
Are we talking about scandals at this point?
It's a great question.
I mean, you know, it was the thing that was fun.
Or would the scandals be worse?
Exactly.
It was so that the beginning of the scandal or, you know, the metaphorical way of saying is the Trojan horse had already entered the city walls.
Right. I mean, it had already begun.
And Reggie had already started talking to these sports marketers, stuff like that.
So it had already begun.
What's interesting about that Lindale White play to me, and one of the reasons that I just loved writing about it,
was they were literally six inches away from immortality, right?
Three in a row.
And again, we go back to the modern era.
No one's done that in modern era.
No one.
Like what, Bud Wilkinson, Oklahoma days or something?
You look back at like, I think Minnesota, University of Minnesota did it back in the 40s or something like that, right?
And no one has really come close to doing it since then.
And so, you know, he's he gets if he gets that, you know, the nose of the ball is just a little bit further.
They ice that game. Vince Young never gets the ball back.
Or if he does, he gets back with about 10 seconds left and they win three in a row.
And, you know, there's there's an interesting corollary there, too, I think.
I mean, I think if you think about that play, the big criticism of that play was it was kind of under thought.
There was a linebacker, Texas, named Drew Kelson, who was assigned Reggie Bush.
and he's the one who made the sort of big staggering blow on Lenton White.
Because Bush wasn't in the game, right?
Bush was not on that play.
Bush was not on the game.
And there's an interesting, the camera pans to him right before the,
right before Liner hikes the ball.
And he's, he looks perturbed to not be in.
And, you know, so if you have him in there, at least he's occupying,
put him in motion or something like that.
He's occupying that one linebacker who made the play.
So you could argue that that play is under thought.
Fast forward a couple of years when Carroll's at the Seahawks and he's on the goal line against the Patriots and they decide to throw the ball.
Russell Wilson end up intercepted as opposed to just giving it to Marshawn Lynch.
You could actually argue that that play is overthought.
And I wonder if there's some kind of connection or some kind of corollary between those two kind of pivotal plays in Carroll's career.
Did you get to ask Pete about that?
I did.
You know, he's, he's, he's always been really, you know, uh, he, the Lendell white play.
He said he did, he both places.
They do it again.
And Lendell white in particular, even without Reggie Bush there, that play was eight yards
again, you know, a carry whenever Lendell got that, you know, that I would agree.
It's just the execution.
Like the Patriots execution was phenomenal because they, they knew ahead of time, but
But also, if Marshawn runs up against the line, just like Lendale does, they're out of time.
Yeah, I mean, they had a little more time there.
The Patriots had to hike the ball, I think, if I remember.
Yeah, they did.
They had to hike the ball at the end of that one.
But it's just so interesting how close.
And if you think about Carroll, he kind of had this historical sort of accident of being around at the same time as Bill Belichick,
who's considered to be the NFL's greatest coach of all time,
and Nick Saban, who's considered to be college football's coach of all time.
So he's kind of, he's drowned out a little bit,
but he's one of three men to win both a national title and a Super Bowl.
He came very close, of course, to winning three national titles
and very close to winning in a row
and then very close to winning two Super Bowls in a row.
So, you know, he's not probably on the Mount Rushmore of coaches,
of football coaches, but, you know, he's up there.
He's top 10, top 12, top 15.
You know, you can't really talk about this era of football
without talking about Pete Carroll.
And in an unorthodox way.
I mean, he did it in a totally different way than Saban and Belichick did.
Yeah.
We talked about that Texas-USC national title game,
which you described in great detail, nice set piece.
Same thing with that USC game, or excuse me, Notre Dame game,
but with the Bush-Push game where you set this up perfectly.
So there's several of these set pieces in this game.
So you really get to understand what's going on, not only on the field, but in the minds of the players, the minds of the coaches, even the fans.
I think it's really wonderful because there's so many things.
You just watch it on TV.
You're like, oh, that was cool.
Oh, Reggie Bush is great.
But there's so much going on behind the scenes or, you know, that led up to this.
And even after the fact, what it meant.
Yeah.
I mean, to me as a football nerd, one of the great privileges of this job is the, I have permission to go ask in detail about these things, you know, like, so it is so, and then, you know, have the privilege of trying to recreate them as well.
And like, you know, it's just so fun to ask Pete Carroll, what was going on in the Bush Bush game?
What was the call?
It was so fun to ask some of the assistant coaches, like, you know, is that a, is that a play that you practiced?
You know, it's so fun to ask Lindale White, would you run that play again?
What did it feel like to not get the first down?
You know, that kind of thing.
So, you know, and I love that.
And to a certain degree, I think that Bush push game to some of the members of that 2005 USC team was the more meaningful one anyway.
Like it was it's the one that they that they are not more meaningful, but the one that they think back on more.
I think it was such a good game.
It's it's worth a look, you know, go back to YouTube and watch it.
It is such a good game.
Yeah, I was wondering as I was reading this, so you mentioned a lot of the rivalries that USC had.
And they're not traditional rivalries that we may think of, but like Washington State got them.
Cal got them.
Oregon State got them a couple times.
And then, of course, you have this Fresno State.
I mean, like, okay, Stanford.
But really, UCLA and Notre Dame traditionally are USC's big rivals.
Where did you come down and saying, like, who was USC's biggest rival during this time?
Because they dominated everybody.
But was it – I'd say it's probably going to come down to Notre Dame or UCLA.
And outlier, probably Oregon State.
I was at that 2008 game, which was amazing.
Yeah.
I mean, Oregon State beat them twice during this era, which was just amazing.
I mean, they were actually a pretty good program back then.
They had some good – Deshaun Jackson, they had some great players.
But Stephen Jackson, they have Deshaun too.
Didn't they have Deshaun as well? Cal, that's right.
So, you know, and Cal beat him with Aaron or almost beat him with Aaron Rodgers.
I mean, what was cool about what Carroll did, you know,
he kind of brought a couple of things to the, to the Pac-10 at that time it was called.
And he brought defense, right?
I remember as a kid checking out 11 o'clock, you turn on,
see what's going on in the Pac-10 because it was always nuts.
There was no defense ball slung around like that. He brought Carroll, you know, it seems like a vibey.
He almost seems like an offensive coordinator just by his meaner, but he's a defense.
He's a defensive genius. Tutored under Monty Kiffin, who, of course, is Lane Kiffin's father, who was one of the great defensive minds of this generation.
And, you know, he brought defense there, but he also he raised the level of play so much that other schools had to respond.
Right. So all of a sudden you had Stanford hiring Jim Harbaugh and Harbaugh turned that program completely around.
You had Oregon getting Chip Kelly, right?
So, I mean, it was kind of like this, the whole thing, it was like this rising tide that lifted all boats, right?
And then what's interesting is when USC went down, I think there's a fine line.
You could thread a needle and see the demise of then the Pac-12, it became the Pac-12, and the demise of USC.
USC was the anchor school in the West.
Had USC still been nationally relevant in the last 20 years which it really hasn You know there a chance that the Pac might have held on as a conference Once you know USC was out of the picture everybody kind of seemed to you know it was the ebbing tide right
Everybody seemed to come down a little bit.
But, yeah, I mean, I loved all that.
You know, he really forced these other teams, other programs to really step up or get way left behind in the dust.
You know, Saban is sort of the same thing in the SEC, by the way.
But yeah, I would agree.
And I think the SEC was always powerful and had that culture of football around it.
But to what we talk about with the SEC now, that is Alabama's doing.
Yep.
I mean, a lot of it, of course, Saban assistants who are doing it, right?
Yeah.
Well, you don't talk a ton about Saban necessarily, just other than comparison.
But there are several names you do bring up in the book.
one being former
USC fullback
who was there before Kiffin, Petros Papadakis
and his family
had huge influence
you talk about Mike Riley, I think
former assistant at USC, he was the coach
at Oregon State, Ed Orgeron
of course, the defensive line
coach, recruiting coordinator, becomes a national
champion at LSU
and then of course Sarkeesian and
Kiffin
I guess my question
is with all these other names that pop up, was there one guy out of those guys that you
either got to interview and really learned to like or really got to dislike or both?
Got to dislike? No, I mean, my job is to not kind of like or dislike if I can, right?
You know, obviously we're humans, right? There are some people, but I have to say my visit with
Lane Kiffin was just absolutely fascinating.
So he was still in Ole Miss.
He was in Oxford at the time.
And, you know, he had, when I got into his office,
he had just come back from hot yoga.
And, you know, he had a Labrador retriever
running in and out of the office
that was kind of like his dog that was named Juice
who became part of the program.
And, you know, he was particularly in sight, really.
I mean, he's such a fascinating, you know,
Carroll's first staff at USC was just incredible, right?
He had Norm, he picked Norm Chow,
plucked Norm Chow out of BYU.
Norm Chow, for those who don't know, was the offensive coordinator there for a long time.
The quarterback coaches, he had coached Jim McMahon, Ty Detmer, Steve Young, just an offensive genius.
Working with athletes who weren't necessarily as good as the athletes he had at USC.
Robbie Bosco, I can't forget Robbie Bosco.
And then he held on to Carroll.
The only real person he held on to from the previous staff was Ed Orgeron, who I think is the best defensive line coach in college football history.
If you look at the people he coached, Warren Sapp, Russell, Maryland.
And then, you know, then he hired these two gun guns, right, who weren't much more than the players they were coaching and Steve Sarkeesian and Lane Kiffin.
Now, Lane Kiffin was a bit of a Nepo hire. I mentioned earlier, you know, Carroll learned a lot from Monty Kiffin. Monty Kiffin was his mentor.
Well, yeah, and he knew he knew him from the Vikings days and even even before that.
In fact, in fact, Pete Carroll babysat Lane Kiffin.
Right. And, you know, in this whole LSU, going to LSU thing, you know, it was famously reported that Kiffin talked to Pete Carroll about what he should do.
And, you know, who knows how that conversation went.
But, you know, the fact that they had this relationship, however good or bad it was, it goes back.
It's 50 years.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, they they called him that they called Lane was his nickname was a toddler was the helicopter because every time he entered a room, he would stir things up, you know, which he is still the helicopter.
It was interesting to talk to Lane about Carroll and about these USC years.
And he gave me a lot of great insight on some of the play calls and some of the players there.
But also, just to think about Lane, you know, here's this offensive genius, right?
And his three main mentors, this was really interesting to me, are all defensive geniuses, right?
His father, Monty Kiffin, obviously, Nick Saban, and Pete Carroll.
And, you know, he had this really cool insight on Pete Carroll, which I sort of hinted at before.
He was like, if you didn't know that Pete Carroll was a defensive coordinator, you would think he was an offensive coordinator.
These other guys are so stern and kind of buttoned up.
And here's this freewheeling guy who's going around throwing the ball and trying to kick balls in practice and all that sort of stuff.
You'd think, oh, that guy's an offensive coordinator.
He's throwing the ball like a quarterback.
Yeah, exactly.
You're like, that guy's wacky.
He's got to be an offensive coordinator.
So anyway, Lane was great.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
So how do you think he'll do at LSU?
Do you think that dynamic is going to play in Baton Rouge?
You know, there's a lot of pressure on him, actually.
You know, I think what a lot of people, people haven't thought about what it means for him, you know, for good reasons, right?
I mean, he left a great program.
He is yet, you know, he hasn't won anything yet, which is, you know, which is really interesting.
He's the hottest coaching commodity in the last 15 years, and he hasn't won anything.
So he's got pressure on himself, I think, to perform.
You know, he's got Louisiana for whatever reason.
I mean, they grow football players like it's unbelievable.
I mean, just locally, if he can lock down the sword, that's what Nick Saban did when he went to LSU.
He really locked down, just locked down Louisiana.
And then, of course, when Saban went to Alabama, he started pulling all those guys out of Louisiana.
You know, so if he can do that, I think there's just there's an enormous amount of pressure on him.
I'm really fascinated to see how all this turns out, you know, because also he's going to be he's a marked man now.
I mean, he was, you know, some people didn't like him all that much.
I think there are now some, he's got fan bases that hate him, you know, Tennessee being one of them.
And now Ole Miss.
Yeah, Ole Miss is not going to like, my nephew actually goes to Ole Miss.
And so it's pretty, it was a pretty interesting time in December.
It's got to rip your heart out if you're a college kid and you see your coach leave.
It's just got to rip your heart out, you know?
Yeah, but anyway, we can get into that later.
We've got a few minutes left here.
You end the book essentially with Pete Carroll in his fishing cabin.
And I did not know that he was a trout fisherman.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't know that either until I started interviewing him.
Yeah.
Do you know how he got into that or just by virtue of living up there in the Northwest?
Being in the Northwest, he started becoming like a real trout fisherman.
Actually, it's interesting because he's such a kinetic guy who's always moving around.
He's a self-diagnosed ADD, you know, sufferer, which, you know, I think is probably not off the mark.
But I think, you know, there are certain things that he's done throughout his life and his career that kind of calm down.
One of them is surfing and boogie boarding.
But I think, you know, once he got to the Pacific Northwest, there's not a whole lot of surfing up there.
So, you know, this was a great way for him to kind of, you know, focus in and calm down and chill out.
yeah so he loves fish for the rainbow big rainbow trout up there yeah and i you know and then after
the book ends of course like it was already published and he he gets canned by the raiders
um have you talked to him since i have not no i've not but you know it's not surprised i mean
you know i was actually a little bit surprised i think these guys all want one more shot right i
mean look look at bill belichick they all want especially those guys you know who were really
really good. Like I deserve one more shot. And, but I was a little surprised he took that job.
If you remember, if you remember in the book, there's a point when Al Davis, Mark Davis is
the current owner's father, uh, is trying to hire Steve Sarkeesian.
Right. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that Sarkeesian was the first guy.
And then Kiffin was floppy seconds.
First, first guy. And then Carol grabs the phone and says, Hey man, you got to look in this guy,
Lane Kiffin. And then, you know, Carol has a not very, uh, you know, nice thing to say about the
craziness of the Raiders' ownership.
And it's not like it's gotten any saner.
So I'm a little surprised he took that job.
And also, you know, it was that roster has to be the worst in the NFL.
They had two good players.
I was going to say, man, like, you know, you look at the Raiders,
I was like, man, Pete Carroll took this job.
They're going to be so crummy.
They got Gentry as running back, but really around it, nobody.
Max Crosby.
And Brock Bowers, and that's it.
yeah, Bowers.
And then they knock off the Patriots.
Who knows? They might go to the Super Bowl.
They knock them off, I think, week one or two.
And man, maybe
Pete's got some magic and then it just
it's a dumpster fire the rest of the season.
And to your point,
he had one of the worst rosters
thanks to a lot of
these trades and firings
and all this stuff for the last
five years or whatever.
And he's left with nothing, but
we'll see how that goes. I don't know.
Um, all right. Uh, well, this is, this has been awesome, Monty. I appreciate your time. Um,
last thing I want to ask you just totally unrelated as a fellow angler, where, uh,
what's your favorite fish or river? Favorite. I do a lot of, uh, I can't narrow it down to one
favorite fish. I would say tarpon and Atlantic salmon are my favorite two fish. They're one,
one A and one B. And I won't tell you which ones they'd be, uh, in terms of rivers. I love the
henry's fork out in idaho but i also i live in brooklyn and so the catskills are very close to me
and i just love and there's great history in the catskills there's great wild trout
it reminds me of the south it's got a lot like you know there's like a japanese knot wood which
looks like a kudzu and there's like a little hint of kind of redneck menace up there like
moon shiners and distant reports and stuff like that so i've always loved i just love the catskills
so but i do a lot of fishing here believe it or not here in new york city i know i was reading
about that. This fascinates me. I've fished in the Boston Harbor for stripers and bluefish and
stuff like that. But, uh, I just like the level of dedication that you have for that is, uh,
off the charts. Yeah. But, um, anyway, it's been great. Uh, maybe we can pick that fishing
conversation up another time, but I appreciate your, uh, your time. That's great. Thanks for
having me on. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Monty Burke
about Men of Troy, the epic afternoons, wild nights,
and enduring legacy of Pete Carroll's USC Trojans.
And it's one of the most fascinating runs
any college program has ever had.
So if you enjoyed the episode, please follow the show,
leave a rating or review,
and share it with another college football fan.
And if you're serious about turning your own writing
into a business, don't forget to visit o'learywriters.com.
That'll take you to my Substack Success Blueprint,
where I walk you through proven systems
to grow from zero subscribers to real revenue
with practical step-by-step strategies
you can start using today.
And that's at o'learywriters.com.
Thanks again.
Thank you.