Carroll to the Falcons? Are We on Same Page?

The other night, my NFL sources were telling me that on Jan. 2, the Atlanta Falcons will call a news conference and announce the hiring of Pete Carroll to replace Dan Reeves.

I was left with the impression it was already a done deal.

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LET ME start at the beginning, and make sure you stay with me until the end. I got a phone call from someone who knew someone in the NFL, who said he had a Page 1 story for me. Nothing I write ever makes it to Page 1, of course, but it’s nice to dream.

These guys knew I knew Bobby Beathard, the former GM for the Chargers while I covered that crummy team, and they reminded me that Beathard has been working as an advisor and confidant to Atlanta owner Arthur Blank the last couple of years.

Well, I know how much Bobby Beathard admires Pete Carroll, and I also know that Carroll’s name had been mentioned as a possible successor to Reeves as early as Oct. 26 in the Macon Telegraph. You could look it up.

And I’ve already gone through something like this before with Beathard when he landed Bobby Ross as the Chargers’ coach.

Ross had put Georgia Tech back on the college football map, just as Carroll has done at USC, and after Georgia Tech won a split national championship in 1990, ranking No. 1 in the coaches’ poll while Colorado was No. 1 in the Associated Press media poll, his name began to appear on everyone’s wish list. Sound familiar?

Georgia Tech failed to lock up Ross and make it financially impossible for him to leave. So, even though he sounded at home in the South, the big money lured him away.

Beathard beat everyone to Ross. He interviewed him weeks before firing Dan Henning and told Ross the Charger job was his for the taking. He did the same thing when he hired Joe Gibbs to be the Redskins’ coach.

Beathard still makes his home in Leucadia -- just down the road from Carroll -- and I can clearly see the two of them meeting. Down by the ocean. Jagged rocks on the right. A surfboard next to Beathard.

Like Ross, Carroll is the hot property now, and nationally has become a sympathetic household name because of the BCS wrong done to USC.

The BCS has overlooked USC, and now the Heisman Trophy voters have made it clear they never saw Matt Leinart or Mike Williams play. Very discouraging.

Carroll, however, has the cachet to go anywhere. He’s already a marketing picture of enthusiasm. This is a coach who embraces challenges, and what challenge is there any longer in beating UCLA every year?

I won’t be surprised if we learn that Karl Dullard was the one who put Beathard in touch with Carroll.

Carroll remains haunted by criticism that he failed as a head coach in the NFL. It’s also known what a competitor he is, and how he would like to prove to everyone that he has what it takes to be the best coach at any level. Being the best in the NFL while working in Atlanta gets you into the Hall of Fame.

It also gives you the chance to work with Michael Vick every day.

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AS I see it, blame Carroll’s departure on the BCS and the college presidents’ lack of interest in embracing a playoff system. In the NFL, there is a Super Bowl to determine the best team -- no arguments, no politics, no computers.

Carroll has seen what Super Bowl success has done for Bill Parcells, but when this college football season is over, the coach carried off the field on the shoulders of his players won’t be what is remembered -- it’ll be the BCS furor.

I called USC President Steven Sample to see what he had to say about his role in forcing Carroll to leave for the NFL, and if there had been any official contact between the Falcons and USC. As always, his secretary took a message.

Later I got a return call on my answering machine from Sample: “Please call me right away,” it said. I figured I’d make him wait awhile before returning the call.

But I heard the phone ring. It wouldn’t stop, and then I swore I heard Mike Garrett’s voice yelling at me to just shut up. I opened my eyes. It was the wife -- what a nightmare.

(The following is for those who still don’t get it.)

I can only imagine how Bruin fans have dreamed the same thing, Pete Carroll taking a job and leaving USC, but that’s all it is -- wishful thinking for those who count UCLA as their favorite team, a bad dream for Trojan fans.

(PETE CARROLL IS STAYING AT USC.)

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ON HBO’S “Inside the NFL,” Bob Costas interviewed NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who said he’d prefer an expansion team in Los Angeles rather than a relocated team because “the expansion fee would be substantial, and the owners would prefer to collect it.” I bet they would. Most of them would drop to all fours in the gutter if they knew someone had dropped a dime.

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SOMEONE E-MAILED to say more than 15,000 folks had signed the petition on rosenotsugar.com to designate the Rose Bowl as the national championship game because USC had been ripped off. And I thought UCLA was the school that had a lot of grads who weren’t working and had a lot of time on their hands.

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UCLA JUST announced its football practice schedule for the Silicon Valley Classic. I had no idea it was taking the game that seriously. I don’t know anyone else who is.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Ingrid Kennedy:

“You sometimes mention ‘the wife.’ What is that? Ordinarily, a wife is a person, but in that case you’d be referring to ‘my wife.’ You wouldn’t be referring to your wife as a thing, would you?”

Best thing I got.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com.