Coach Pete Carroll

USC, which doesn't play this week, will practice at sunrise today so coaches not already on the road recruiting can travel across the Southland and the country in search of talent. Running backs coach Todd McNair left Thursday and two or three other assistants also will be out of state as USC seeks to replenish a roster in need of depth despite several top-five recruiting classes. Coach Pete Carroll and several assistants will remain in Southern California. On Thursday, before the Trojans practiced, Carroll crossed paths with Washington Coach Steve Sarkisian at a City Section playoff game between Los Angeles Jordan and Harbor City Narbonne.

Separation Sunday is in the books. The Green Bay Packers separated themselves from the top of the NFL, emerging from the weekend at 6-0 and the league's only undefeated team. The Indianapolis Colts separated themselves in the other direction, dropping to a league-worst 0-6. St. Louis is 0-5 and Miami, which plays at the New York Jets on Monday, is 0-4. And then there's the separation that had millions of viewers rewinding their DVRs — the quarrelsome quarantine of coaches Jim Schwartz of Detroit and Jim Harbaugh of San Francisco.

USC quarterback Matt Barkley is not completely healed. Neither is safety Taylor Mays . But a day after announcing that Barkley would start Saturday night against Washington State despite a sore shoulder, Coach Pete Carroll on Thursday made a similar call regarding Mays, who is recovering from a knee sprain. "He's ready to go," Carroll said. Mays, though, said it was "50-50," and that it might be a game-time decision. "I think I'm going to play unless something goes wrong," he said.

The NCAA issued a controversial report Thursday that rates major college coaches by how well their athletes perform in the classroom. These statistics, available to the public online, make use of the Academic Progress Rates that the NCAA has been compiling for Division I teams for the last six years. The numbers are not new — they have been released annually on a team-by-team basis — but this is the first time they have been linked to specific coaches, even as some of those coaches moved from school to school.

While preparing for Saturday's game against Oregon State, USC spent an inordinate amount of time this week performing extra drills with one objective: Recovering fumbles. Coach Pete Carroll demanded the focus after the Trojans forced four fumbles against Notre Dame but recovered none of them. Carroll hopes the work will pay off against Oregon State, but the odds are against the Trojans if the ball is in the hands of Beavers running back Jacquizz Rodgers . The diminutive sophomore from Texas has never lost a fumble in 454 touches, a streak that includes 387 rushing attempts and 67 pass receptions.

USC regards today's mock game at the Coliseum as a dress rehearsal for next week's season opener against San Jose State. It's also a coming out of sorts for Matt Barkley. The freshman quarterback made national headlines after Coach Pete Carroll on Thursday chose Barkley over Aaron Corp as the Trojans' starter. So the curiosity factor is high for fans coming out to catch a glimpse of USC's officially stamped present and probable future. Barkley is hoping for a better performance than his last one at the Coliseum.

Jesse Scroggins called his shot Monday night: He will win a national championship at USC in 2012. Unless he decides to go elsewhere. The Lakewood High quarterback has imposed a Saturday morning deadline for the Trojans to name a replacement for Coach Pete Carroll, who has resigned to take the same post in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks. If USC doesn't name a successor by then, Scroggins said, "I'm going to look for a college who could win the national championship in 2012."

The buzz surrounding what might be Pete Carroll's departure to the NFL's Seattle Seahawks has already affected USC's recruiting effort. "This whole scenario couldn't have happened at a worse time for USC," Allen Wallace, national recruiting editor for Scout.com, said Saturday. Kyle Prater, a receiver from Illinois who committed to the Trojans and was set to begin classes Monday, said Saturday that he was reevaluating his situation. Prater made his comments during the nationally televised U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio.

USC's off-week practices provided the showcase, as planned, for younger players hoping to impress coaches. But junior quarterback Mitch Mustain also took advantage of the opportunity and might have positioned himself to become Matt Barkley's backup for the seventh-ranked Trojans' Oct. 17 game at Notre Dame. On Friday, after Mustain completed 10 of 12 passes and threw for two touchdowns during an early morning workout that was conducted without pads, Coach Pete Carroll declined to say whether the former Arkansas starter had overtaken sophomore Aaron Corp as the Trojans' No. 2 quarterback.

There was a distinctly medical tone to the USC football practice on Thursday, and the prognosis was encouraging. The good news started with a visit from a doctor who is treating Stafon Johnson for the severe throat injury the tailback suffered in a weightlifting accident last week. Johnson had undergone a series of tests earlier in the day. "They were beside themselves with the wonderful results they got, to see how everything they worked on is looking great at this point," Coach Pete Carroll said.

Reporting from Renton, Wash. — In a way, Pete Carroll has already transformed the Seattle Seahawks into the Seattle USC-hawks. Eight of his former players are on the training camp roster — and that's after he cut LenDale White — and his staff includes former Trojans coaches Jeremy Bates (offensive coordinator), Ken Norton Jr. (linebackers), Rocky Seto (defensive quality control) and Brian Schneider (special teams). "It's just guys that are used to what Coach Carroll's teaching, guys who can hit the ground running," fullback Ryan Powdrell said.

A Pac 10 head coach has been found in violation of NCAA rules for retaining a paid consultant to attend practices and watch games — circumstances identical to those surrounding former USC football coach Pete Carroll's hiring of an NFL veteran to help with the Trojans' punting and kicking teams — according to an internal Pac 10 report. The document does not name the coach or the sport, but the Pac 10 sent it to the conference's schools after The Times reported last summer that Carroll had quietly employed Pete Rodriguez to monitor practices and games throughout the 2008 season, in apparent violation of NCAA limits on the number of coaches each team may hire.

With national signing day for high school recruits less than 12 hours away, USC Coach Lane Kiffin on Tuesday hastily sat for his media guide portrait in the lobby of Heritage Hall. Total time with photographer: Less than 30 seconds. "Every place I'm at for a minute may be a missed call," Kiffin said as he hustled upstairs to his office. "It's closing time." Six seasons as a USC assistant and one as head coach at Tennessee have made Kiffin cognizant of the importance of finishing recruiting seasons strong.

Born: May 9, 1975, Bloomington, Minn. :: Education: Jefferson High School, Bloomington, Minn.; Fresno State University. Playing experience: Quarterback, Fresno State, 1994-97. :: Family: wife Layla Reaves Kiffin, children Landry, Presley and Knox. YEAR SCHOOL COACHING POSITION 1997-98 Fresno State Graduate assistant 1999 Colorado State Graduate assistant/offensive line 2000 Jacksonville (NFL)

Jesse Scroggins called his shot Monday night: He will win a national championship at USC in 2012. Unless he decides to go elsewhere. The Lakewood High quarterback has imposed a Saturday morning deadline for the Trojans to name a replacement for Coach Pete Carroll, who has resigned to take the same post in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks. If USC doesn't name a successor by then, Scroggins said, "I'm going to look for a college who could win the national championship in 2012."

Pete Carroll had no choice. Not really. In Carroll's mind, the opportunity to coach again in the NFL, in a situation that appeared to offer him all that he could hope for, was no longer a possibility. "I had given up on it," he said during a phone interview early this morning, "but it came out of nowhere." Actually, it came out of the Pacific Northwest, from the Seattle Seahawks and billionaire owner Paul Allen. The NFL team reached agreement with the 58-year-old Carroll on a five-year contract that will pay him nearly $33 million and give him the control he never enjoyed with the New York Jets or the New England Patriots.

It's been five weeks since Aaron Corp last felt like USC's starting quarterback. On Tuesday, with freshman Matt Barkley held out of passing drills again because of a bone bruise in his right shoulder, Corp at least looked the part, taking all of the first-team snaps and running the offense with only one notable mistake. "I'm ready," Corp said. "I was ready last week, ready two weeks ago. So I'll be ready if they need me." Coach Pete Carroll , however, reiterated that he had no fixed timeline to make a decision about who will start Saturday's Pacific 10 Conference opener at Washington.

USC quarterback Matt Barkley says he is ready to play, pain or no pain. Barkley, who started the first two games and then sat out the loss at Washington because of a bone bruise in his right shoulder, said Tuesday that he was planning to start Saturday night against Washington State at the Coliseum. But Coach Pete Carroll cautioned that he would monitor the freshman's progress before any choice was made between Barkley and Aaron Corp . "It could happen if everything works right," Carroll said of Barkley's starting.

The buzz surrounding what might be Pete Carroll's departure to the NFL's Seattle Seahawks has already affected USC's recruiting effort. "This whole scenario couldn't have happened at a worse time for USC," Allen Wallace, national recruiting editor for Scout.com, said Saturday. Kyle Prater, a receiver from Illinois who committed to the Trojans and was set to begin classes Monday, said Saturday that he was reevaluating his situation. Prater made his comments during the nationally televised U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio.

As the Seattle Seahawks worked through final details to bring Pete Carroll back to the NFL, USC has targeted a coach it wants to replace him. But it might not be easy to lure Oregon State's Mike Riley. Riley was among Athletic Director Mike Garrett's top choices in 2000 before he hired Carroll. A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed Saturday that Riley was at the top of USC's list. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.