Sep 22, 2026 · 16 min · 7 segments
House of Troy is a new podcast from LA Times Studios tracing the rise and fall of USC football, from coach Pete Carroll’s back-to-back national titles in the 2000s, to the Reggie Bush scandal, to the…
Our story begins in November 2000, at a critical fork in the road for USC football.
The Trojans hadn't been contenders on the national stage for years.
Morale was in the tank.
There was a lot of outside pressure.
People were just not very content with the program.
That's Darrell Gross.
We were looking for a successful college football head coach.
And that's really how we started the hunt, looking for that.
Erickson was the coach at Oregon State at the time, and he definitely checked all the boxes.
He was a well-established college coach.
It made sense.
But just as soon as they closed in, Erickson backed out.
I
thought it was a done deal.
And so for me, I'm like, what? You know, he had all but committed to the job.
Rejected by his first choice, Gross turned his attention to a coach right down the road, Oregon's Mike Belotti.
I interviewed with them.
They offered me the job.
Our story begins in November 2000, at a critical fork in the road for USC football.
The Trojans hadn't been contenders on the national stage for years.
Morale was in the tank.
There was a lot of outside pressure.
People were just not very content with the program.
That's Darrell Gross.
We were looking for a successful college football head coach.
And that's really how we started the hunt, looking for that.
Erickson was the coach at Oregon State at the time, and he definitely checked all the boxes.
He was a well-established college coach.
It made sense.
But just as soon as they closed in, Erickson backed out.
I
thought it was a done deal.
And so for me, I'm like, what? You know, he had all but committed to the job.
Rejected by his first choice, Gross turned his attention to a coach right down the road, Oregon's Mike Belotti.
I interviewed with them.
They offered me the job.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.