Even after taking the Seattle Seahawks to the Super Bowl and his former team, the USC Trojans, have moved on from their sanctions, Pete Carroll reflects on his exit from the college game.

The former head football coach at the University of Southern California (USC) told the Los Angeles Times he would not have been able to leave if the NCAA sanctions were imminent. He has long defended his former team, arguing the NCAA dragged out an investigation too long and still did not have sufficient evidence to justify such harsh penalties.

"What I hope comes out of this is that this never happens to a university again," he told the newspaper. "I think it was extraordinarily overdone, an overreaction."

Carroll won 97 games with the Trojans, lost only 19, won seven BCS bowl games and a National Championship that was later vacated due to sanctions. After more than four years of investigating former Trojans running back Reggie Bush, the NCAA determined he improperly accepted money and benefits. The team's trophy was stripped and Bush's Heisman Trophy was vacated, not being awarded to anyone else for that season.

The NCAA also determined Carroll's coaching staff, or certain members, either did or should have known about these improper benefits. Therefore, USC was hit with the loss of 30 scholarships over three years, a two-year postseason ban and vacated wins in 2004 and 2005.

Carroll left USC five months before the NCAA handed down these penalties and later appeared before college sports' governing body after accepting the Seahawks' head coaching offer. Various critics lambasted Carroll for jumping ship to avoid coaching a team that would inevitably be crippled by the sanctions, something the coach said was completely unwarranted.

"It does bother me because it's not right and it's not accurate," Carroll told the LAT. "I didn't feel bad about leaving at all. I didn't feel bad about it because I knew what the truth was."

USC athletic director Pat Haden told the newspaper Carroll is "revered" in the department, even though he may still have his critics at the school. He too denies the notion Carroll left to avoid being hit with heavy NCAA sanctions.

"The truth was, an opportunity came up and it was one I couldn't turn away from," Carroll said. "The NCAA came back at the university... 'Now we're going to revisit after five years.' I had no knowledge that was coming. We thought maybe it wasn't coming because they didn't have anything to get us with. It wasn't five days, it wasn't five weeks. It was five years.

"Had we known that that was imminent... I would never have been able to leave under those circumstances. When I look back now, I would have stayed there to do what we needed to do to resolve the problem."