Obviously they had some really good teams back in the day as well.
But this is an interesting point. In the 21 years before Carroll, USC won 10 games only once. They've actually won 10+ games in 4 of the 10 seasons since Carroll left but the Pac-12 hasn't exactly been a juggernaut to navigate.
Some egregiously bad reffing in the LSU/OU game with the missed PI call. Only thought is that the refs were expecting the ball to be uncatchable, surprised it actually fell to the OU receiver, and then expected one of the other guys to make the call and no one did.