Every time USC football seems to get back onto a roll, something bad happens. Injuries, upset losses, NCAA investigations.

(Vidal Hazelton’s (r) father sent a tersely-worded missive to Carroll) 

This time, an astonishingly blunt letter from the father of USC wide receiver Vidal Hazelton has surfaced online that details his dissatisfaction with Pete Carroll’s USC football medical staff. Even stranger is the reaction of Vidal’s grandmother, who contradicts his father’s assertions and says, “My (grand)son is drama. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Uh, wot?

OK, well here’s the angry letter that was fired off by Dexter Hazelton, and posted at Scout.com. (Vidal’s father is also claiming he doesn’t know how the communique ended up online.)

I am at a complete loss for words because my son, Vidal, has not received
treatment on his ankle and quadriceps since the team’s return to Los Angeles
on Saturday evening. As you know, Vidal suffered a contusion to his
quadriceps muscle and sprained his ankle during the UVA game. To date (for
over 36 hours), (1) his ankle has not been X-rayed and (2) he has received
no treatment to either injury, other than having a boot placed on his ankle.

I must admit that I am completely perplexed by the lack of attention your training staff is giving to Vidal’s injuries. When I asked Vidal if he
received treatment today, he told me that the training room is closed today. In all of my years of associating with athletes, and corresponding with
athletic trainers, I have never heard of a training room being closed on a
holiday during the sport’s season. This includes Labor Day, Thanksgiving,
Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, etc.

You and I have discussed my dissatisfaction with the manner in which Vidal
has received treatment for injuries in the past. Most notably, the double
hernia that he played with for all of the 2007 season, and possibly the 2006
season - an injury that went misdiagnosed for the entirety of the season(s).
Given our discussions, I trusted that corrective action would be taken.
However, this is clearly a policy issue that has not been addressed, and the
results are intolerable.

In consulting with doctors and athletic trainers on the east coast, I have
been told that Vidal should be receiving at least three treatments a day.
Additionally, his ankle should have been X-rayed upon the team’s return to
Los Angeles, and no later than the early morning hours of Sunday, August 31, 2008. However, it appears as though your training staff has no “sense of
urgency” to get him back to 100%.

The clock is ticking and Ohio State will be in town next week. What is
being done to ensure that my son is being cared for in a proper manner???
When is the USC training staff going to meet his medical needs??? It makes
me wonder if the trust that I have extended is misplaced.

Sincerely,
Dexter Hazelton

Keep in mind that Hazelton, at least as reported by the media, has been regarded as a disappointment at wide receiver for the Trojans, despite impressive athletic ability. Perhaps part of his problem was the injuries mentioned in the letter.

But based on the reax of his mother and grandmother, you wonder if Vidal is upset that Carroll isn’t getting him enough touches, so he’s trumping up the injury thing in order to gain sympathy from his father.

The answer is probably somewhere in between.

As for Carroll, he’s ducking the issue altogether. The coach to the ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER: “I’m not going to comment on it. I’m not going to talk about it. This sounds too personal for me to comment on.”

More cracks in Troy facade. Maybe it’s just me, but ever since Norm Chow left, who was the only assistant coach who would challenge Carroll, things have gone downhill for the Trojans. Perhaps Carroll should look at hiring the best-qualified people for his staff rather than surrounding himself with yes-men/coaching buddies. I’m not saying that’s the problem in this case, but these sorts of incidents are cropping up more and more - and there’s got to be a reason for what is now obviously a lack of program-wide control.