On the stage at an event Wednesday night at USC, Pete Carroll spoke on success in sports and business, but afterward he expressed his opinions on the NCAA sanctions against the school after he left.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Carroll and another USC alum Will Ferrell addressed a crowd of about 1,200 on the campus at an upbeat event. However, he told the newspaper why the sanctions, levied against the school after his departure in 2010, still bother him.

"We made some mistakes along the way but I don't think it was dealt with properly," Carroll said. "I thought it was dealt with poorly and very irrationally and done with way too much emotion instead of facts."

The NCAA discovered USC football tailback and former Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush and USC basketball guard O.J. Mayo received improper benefits before turning pro. The school was docked 30 scholarships for three years and the football team received a bowl ban for two years. Bush also had to return his Heisman Trophy, which was not awarded to anyone else for that season.

"We just didn't know what was going on," he said. "Had we known I would like to think we would do the right thing and would have stopped everything and fixed it by doing what we should have done. But unfortunately, because we didn't know, the university gets killed over the deal."

Carroll led the USC football team to two national championships and seven bowl wins, but left before the penalties were levied. He took over the Seattle Seahawks and won the Super Bowl earlier this month.

Since Carroll's departure and the sanctions that followed, USC struggled through Lane Kiffin's tenure as head coach before firing him and hiring Steve Sarkisian. Now, the team is in their final months of the penalties.

"I just think it was not handled well," said Carroll. "I sat in the meetings. I listened to the people talk. I listened to the venom that they had for our program. They didn't understand a thing about what we were all about... They never were here. And they didn't want to hear it. They never even got close to hearing what we're all about.

"They tried to make it out like it was something else. They made a terrible error."