Former athletic director Mike Garrett reacts to recent events at USC

Mike Garrett appeared at Los Angeles Roosevelt High on Friday to deliver a gift from the NFL.

It was a golden football, which the league had offered to anyone who had played in a Super Bowl so they could take it back to their school as part of the league’s 50-year celebration of its championship game.

“It is home,” Garrett said of Roosevelt. “I was here before the rest of the city even knew who I was.”

Garrett made the presentation not far — within “spitting distance,” he said — from the place where he became a star. As tailback at USC, he won the Heisman Trophy before enjoying an eight-year career in the NFL. Later, he was USC’s athletic director when the Trojans became college football’s dominant program under Coach Pete Carroll.

Garrett was ousted from his job in 2010, in the wake of severe NCAA sanctions against USC for football and men’s basketball violations.

Pat Haden, a former USC quarterback and Rhodes Scholar, was brought in as Garrett’s successor to help the Trojans reorganize and navigate the penalties.

Garrett’s appearance Friday morning came just a short time before Haden, citing health concerns, resigned from the College Football Playoff selection committee.

Haden has been criticized recently for not thoroughly vetting Steve Sarkisian before hiring him as USC’s football coach, and initially supporting him before having to fire the coach mid-season. Haden’s workload as also been scrutinized because he is a board member for several organizations, pulling in a half-million dollars a year in addition to his $2.5-million salary from USC.

Asked about Haden, and his own tenure running USC athletics, Garrett said:

“Part of the deal is when someone takes over, they have to rationalize why they have to take over. A lot of things they say are not very accurate. … My record speaks for itself. I don’t even have to talk about that. The things that occurred there were things that occurred by coaches and so forth. All I know is that we did a good job; I did a great job. We had great sports, we graduated our kids, we raised money, we built the Galen Center, we refurbished both of the athletic departments. …

“One guy takes over and they have to rationalize things, and that’s basically it. I’ve never got into it before and I don’t want to start now.

“I’ll say this to you — we dominated college football for five to seven years. There’s a lot of people who were envious. The NCAA, the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten, we dominated it. The penalties we had were not even close to what Miami had, Ohio State, Penn State, and they all got less penalties. Why is that so? It’s because of envy.

“I said that my last year there and I’ll say it now: when people are envious of you, whatever state it is, people are replacing you or competing against you, they take liberties and say things. They also know my character. I’m not going to come back and start arguing. I’ll let my performance tell my story.”

Garrett was also asked about the future of USC football.

“I would have to know what they’re doing, what the coaching staff is about, what kind of talent they have, and I don’t know that,” he said. “But if you ask me, do I hope they get better? The answer is absolutely yes.”

Alex.shultz@latimes.com

Times staff writer Mike Hiserman contributed to this report.