Heroes - Pete Carroll

I wanted to get to this earlier in the week, but didn't get a chance.

If you follow college football even a little, you know that Pete Carroll is the head coach of USC. You also know his teams are consistently among the best in the nation.

What you might not know – and what I didn't learn until Tuesday night, watching his Trojans eat the Illini for dinner – is Carroll's one heckuva guy off the field.

Carroll is one of the founders of A Better L.A.. He heads into south-central L.A. in hopes of reducing gang violence and putting young people to work. In fact, he's placed over 40 at-risk youth in jobs in the past several years. Here's more.

He also has someone on his staff with the title Special Assistant to the Head Coach.

Sounds like a job hired out by an egoist and given to some butt-kissing yes man, no?

Kinda, but for the fact that Carroll special assistant is Ricky Rosas, an 18-year-old who survived leukemia as a young child. The leukemia stunted Ricky's growth – he's 4'8" and 91 pounds – and he is learning disabled. He can't drive, so he takes two buses to work at the USC campus every day.

Rosas is universally loved on campus, and has been getting a fair bit of media attention.

Dear college football coaches,

This is how you make a difference in your community.