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The Detroit News today summarized the indignities that fans of the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings suffer when they attend home games at Joe Louis Arena.

Among the atrocities that Detroit fans endure to watch hockey, according to the article, are:

• The steps leading up to nosebleed seats are steep;
• It doesn’t smell too great inside the arena;
• Seating in the arena isn’t roomy enough — “Maybe they can have those seats like in the movie theater where you can lean back a little bit,” said Lawrence Westerfield of Detroit;
• The scoreboard isn’t extravagant enough;
• It takes a few minutes to pay a visit to the restrooms, particularly for women;
• It takes a little while longer to get out of the parking lot after a game.

The cost to remedy all these injustices? The Red Wings acknowledge that it would cost $10 million. But the Red Wings don’t want to do this. They’re letting their lease expire and instead want a new arena in downtown Detroit.

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Reports have surfaced that University of Southern California head football coach Pete Carroll has reached an agreement to coach the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks. He will reportedly be introduced as the team’s new head coach on Monday, just days after the organization kicked last season’s coach Jim Mora to the curb.

At first blush, it’s a puzzling deal for Carroll, who endured a lousy run in the NFL, logging a vanilla 33-31 record through two coaching stints with the New York Jets and New England Patriots.

Then he went to coach USC in 2001, where he seemed to hit his stride in the college ranks and elevate a once-moribund Trojans program. His teams there were always contenders for the national championship, even winning a pair in 2003 and 2004.

Why Carroll would leave USC and return to the vastly different culture of the NFL is anyone’s guess for now, but we’ll take a stab at what might be going on.

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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a $787 billion money grab passed in an effort to defibrillate a flatlining economy, create or save jobs and…put asses in football stadium seats?

For the second time we know of — there may well have been others — self-interested stadium proponents are trying to secure federal stimulus funding to make improvements to a football stadium.

The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., is reportedly eyeing a Dec. 31, 2010 deadline to secure its allowance from Uncle Sam to replenish what its supporters describe repeatedly as a stadium in decline. It’s a strange characterization, given that the stadium was good enough to host the college football Rose Bowl game on New Year’s Day and will host the upcoming Bowl Championship Series finale.

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Finally, the NCAA has a prime opportunity to prove that it is an effective and devoted defender of its mission: amateur college athletics. Or it could just prove that it is a Trojan horse to its own cause.

The University of Southern California imposed sanctions upon itself for the scandal that enveloped its basketball program and its former star, O.J. Mayo, who was accused of taking improper gifts while playing under the guise of NCAA amateur athletics. The Los Angeles Times reports that the USC Trojans athletics department will not let its surging men’s basketball team play in the PAC-10 Conference tournament or the NCAA postseason tournament this year. That’s the worst of it, as it renders the Trojans season, which is riding the wave of a eight-game winning streak, essentially a waste. The program will also lose one scholarship this season and the next, as well as vacate all its 21 victories from the 2007-08 season, the season Mayo played for the Trojans.

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“We’re really disappointed these guys didn’t come through,” said Southern California Trojans head football coach Pete Carroll. “They had all the help in the world to get it done, and they didn’t do it.” via the Los Angeles Times.

No, Carroll is not referring to the results of the long-running NCAA investigation into his former player Reggie Bush, who is accused of illegally accepting thousands of dollars of gifts from marketers hoping to sign the 2005 Heisman Award winner once he went to the NFL.

Nor is Carroll speaking on behalf of the USC athletic department on the NCAA’s findings of its investigation into allegations that star Trojans basketball player O.J. Mayo similarly took cash and other high-priced gifts while playing under the guise of amateur college athletics.

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