Mike Celizic

When I think about Pete Carroll, the name that keeps jumping into my head is Knute Rockne. I keep telling myself that there have to be better analogies, and there probably are. But my brain won’t cooperate. It keeps whispering “Rockne.”

This isn’t an opinion based on careful analysis. It’s a gut feeling. If it were anything else, I’d flippantly fling it in the recycle bin and move on.

It shouldn’t be hard to do. Carroll isn’t anything like Rockne, college football’s first celebrity coach. Rockne was born in Norway and worked in the U.S. Post Office in Chicago before enrolling at Notre Dame. He was a star end at the age of 25 on the team that beat Army in 1913 and introduced the nation to the forward pass.

On graduation, Rockne became a chemistry teacher at Notre Dame. When he took over the football team in 1918, it’s doubtful that many people outside of Notre Dame either knew exactly who he was or cared.

It took him six years to win his first national championship and five more years to win the first of back-to-back titles in 1929-30. By then, he had transformed himself into a coaching superstar, the darling of Hollywood and the syndicated columnists like Grantland Rice who were to Rockne’s world what ESPN is to Carroll’s. When Rockne died in a plane crash in the spring of  42, it was like the death of a president.

Not a scrap of that story line adheres to Carroll, who was 49 — seven years older than Rockne was when he died — when he took over at USC. Rockne may have been a relative unknown when he took over Notre Dame, which itself had just begun to build its reputation, but that was better than what Carroll was when he hired on at Troy — a loser.

And not just a loser, but something of a joke. His first head-coaching job had been with the Jets in 1994. He brought a lot of enthusiasm, a sense of humor and a collegian’s rah-rah style to the NFL and left with it at the end of the year with a 6-10 record and a pink slip. A three-year stint with New England from 1997-99 saw a 10-6 record and a 1-1 record in the playoffs, then two years of decline before he collected his second pink slip.

He came by the USC job by default when all the candidates ahead of him, including Dennis Erickson, turned down the job.

But here’s where I start thinking Rockne again. The reason is because both he and Carroll basically came out of nowhere — one from the chem lab and the other from the scrapheap. One was a funny-looking immigrant kid, the other was just funny. Rockne took over a program that had had a taste of glory and wanted more. Carroll moved into one that had been at the heights of the game and wanted to get back.

Most of all, both are heavy on charisma and self-confidence; Rockne didn’t care what everybody else thought, and neither does Carroll. And those qualities are what made Rockne the best in his day and Carroll the best in his.

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A big difference is that Carroll has gotten to the top faster than Rockne did. After going 6-6 in his first season, Carroll went 11-2 in his second, and then won 37 of his next 39 games, including 34 in a row and two national championships — the AP title in 2003 and both the AP and the BCS crown the following year.

After finishing 11-2 last year, Carroll’s record for the past five seasons is 59-6. His overall winning percentage is 84.4 percent, just a couple of ticks behind Rockne’s all-time Division I-A record of 88.1 percent. He's expected to move closer to that mark this season as the Trojans start No. 1 in virtually everyone's preseason poll. And his recent recruiting classes have been second to none.

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There are other coaches who have been around longer and are even now being measured for the bronze statues that will some day grace their campuses — Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden would fit in that category.

And there are others in the past who have had greater runs of greatness, including Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma in the 1950s when he won three championships in six seasons, and Bear Bryant at Alabama in the 1960s and 1970s.

Carroll is actually closer to Bryant, who took over ‘Bama in 1958 at the relatively advanced age of 44. (He turned 45 during the season.) The Bear won a title in his fourth season and won back-to-back titles in 1964-65 and finished third in 1966 to Notre Dame and Michigan State despite being undefeated. He won his last championship in 1979.

Just the same, when I think of what he means to college football and the fear with which everyone views his teams, the name that comes to mind is Rockne. I’ve got a feeling old Knute just might agree it’s not a bad comparison.

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