EDSBS: Coach Carroll, you're known for your innovative practice techniques. Explain a few of them to us.
Pete Carroll: Lemme just say that I'm jacked to talk with you, Orson. Just psyched and jacked and excited to do it.
EDSBS: Of course you are.
PC: Of course I am. We use a variety of techniques. I like to keep things hopping, so we move POP POP POP from drill to drill, emphasizing competition at every position. The best players play at USC, regardless of age. We compete. We drive. We win. That's what we do.
EDSBS: And by drive you mean...
PC: We get the running backs to drive trucks during practice. Full-size Toyota Tundras, actually, the official truck of USC athletics. We're jacked to have them on board with us.
EDSBS: You're fucking with me, right? You're totally fucking with me, Pete.
PC: Nope, no fucking with going on here. We line them up in the backfield, hand off through the window, and then have the running back place the ball in one of the Tundra's ample cup holders. Seriously, those things will hold a pony keg of beer. Not that we endorse drinking pony kegs of beer while driving here at USC.
EDSBS: Of course not.
PC: But it keeps some of the wear and tear off our backs while encouraging our lineman to move quickly and make big holes for our backs at the same time.
EDSBS: And that means you have men going up against trucks. On the football field.
PC: Yeah, it's awesome. Just awesome. Rey's only totalled two this season, though. He's hoping to get to four or five before the UCLA game.
EDSBS: And you haven't lost a lineman to...um...being hit by a truck yet?
PC: Well, I'm not saying that! (Laughs.) But, you know: omelets, eggs. Only the fittest survive here at USC. We compete. And sometimes run over our lineman with the full force of a beautiful yet rugged 2008 Toyota Tundra full-size pickup.
EDSBS: And this...works?
PC: Oh, hell yes. Did you see what happened to Nebraska Saturday night?