An expatriate in paradise

LOS ANGELES - He is a star in a land of stars, a nice Hollywood mix of Knute Rockne and Bob Barker.

University of Southern California football coach Pete Carroll needs more than an hour after practice to accommodate the daily interviews, autographs, photo requests, and meet-and-greet sessions. And you never know when Will Ferrell or Al Cowlings is going to be around.

Carroll coaches the No. 1 college team in the land and he's not roasted on sports talk radio anymore. The weather is great, the living is easy, and he probably has the deepest roster in the history of NCAA football. He's still pumped and jacked, and ready to put a positive spin on everything. He knows his Trojans are supposed to win, 45-0, every week and cruise to another national championship, which would be his third in seven years at Southern Cal.

"We're fortunate," says Carroll, who'll turn 56 when his top-ranked Trojans play at Nebraska Saturday night. "I think that every coach that ever coached would like to have a chance to deal with this. It feels normal to us to have expectations like this. I'd rather have it than not have it."

USC practices are better than most teams' game days. Linebackers coach Ken Norton Jr., son of a heavyweight champ, calls out the defense while the USC marching band (which went platinum twice with Fleetwood Mac) practices continuously beyond the walls of Howard Jones Field. Palm trees sway in the no-humidity breeze, and if you look past the end zone to the right of Heritage Hall, you can see toned, tanned coeds diving off the springboard above the practice pool. While all this is going on, Carroll - wearing sunglasses - runs from station to station, claps his hands, exhorts his players, and throws 40-yard spirals to wideouts. He wears a whistle around his neck but would look just as comfortable with a letter sweater and a megaphone.

Boola boola. Pompom Pete is on top of the college football mountain. It's a long way from grim, gray Foxborough, circa 1997-99.

No Martin, too much Kraft

Carroll, of course, is the man who bridged the Bills for the New England Patriots. He followed Parcells and preceded Belichick. He was the first head coaching hire Bob Kraft made and he was dismissed after an 8-8, no-playoff season in 1999. His tenure was marked by front office chaos and incompetence. Kraft was too involved, general manager Bobby Grier was overmatched, and Carroll took the fall despite compiling the third-best winning percentage (.549) in franchise history.

"I was there for three years and it was the hardest 10 years I've ever had," Carroll says with a laugh. "It was a great challenge. Unfortunately, things weren't quite right to put it together the way I think we could have done it, but it didn't turn out quite as well as it needed to. We were very close. I took some really good things out of that experience.

"I didn't sanction what people thought. I felt like we had made enough tactical errors along the way. Our fate was kind of dealt to us. As soon as you give Curtis Martin to your archrival, you're in deep trouble. He was the best player in the division, and it's hard to come back from that. They get him, we don't have him. If there was one single thing that kept us from being good, it was that in itself. Just to give him to the Jets."

To listen to Carroll is to understand the learning curve of Kraft, who has evolved into an effective, hands-off owner under Belichick. Carroll did not enjoy the same distance.

"It was a transition time for the [Kraft] family," Carroll remembers. "They were all figuring it out. They had just come off of Bill [Parcells's run] and they had a thought of what they wanted it to be like - proactive and involved. Robert was in everything, trying to figure it out, and in those three years, I think he grew a lot. He did figure it out. He backed off and gave Bill [Belichick] full rein and did it exactly the way I think you should do it, and in that he found famous success.

"I really like Robert and we have a longtime relationship. It just didn't work out quite right. He wasn't ready for me and I couldn't make him see that we could do things differently. But the aftermath of it, everything worked out beautifully."

Remember when the Red Sox fired Joe Morgan, and "Tollway Joe's" parting words were, "These guys aren't as good as everybody thinks they are"? Turned out Morgan was right. He'd had the Sox in contention in September of 1991, and then his replacement (Butch Hobson) ran them right into the cellar.

It was somewhat similar in Foxborough. Carroll's Patriots went 10-6, 9-7, and 8-8, which got him fired. The next year - Belichick's first - the Patriots went 5-11. That was in 2000 and that was the year Carroll was out of football. He admits he rooted hard for his former team to fail.

"It was good to see them lose the year after I left," Carroll says, smiling. "I loved every one of those losses. I can't tell you that I'm that gracious of a guy. Sorry, but . . . Once they lost, I didn't care. I just needed one bad year and I was over it. Now I'm excited for Bill and Robert. I loved that place. It was an awesome place. I would love to have coached there for the rest of my life if I had done it right."

Foxborough revelation

Seeing Carroll as a Saturday sideline rock star, it's hard to remember how bad it was for him in New England, where he was football's answer to Hobson. He has many thoughts about his treatment from Patriots fans and the New England media.

"Late in the second year," he remembers, "I woke up in the middle of the night sweating and fighting it and couldn't sleep. I turned on the television and the John Goodman Babe Ruth movie was on at 3:30 in the morning and it was the scene when he was by the dugout and the Boston people are just viciously attacking him verbally. They're calling him every name in the book, and I'm looking at it and I thought, 'That's the same guys that have been yelling at me!' They captured them in this movie and I thought, 'They're yelling at Babe Ruth and they're yelling at me. Hey, I'm OK. It ain't so bad.'

"In that moment, I realized the fans in New England are great fans. They want to win in the worst way and they're going to let you know what is not right, and there ain't nothing wrong with that. I instantly captured a different perspective. It's you guys [media] as well. You're all tied into it, too. You all grew up with it. You can't help yourself. It's a beautiful thing. It is so inherent in that culture. You've just got to win. Nobody wanted to win more than we did. I don't blame you for being [ticked]. I'm [ticked], too. So it was a real cool moment. I was never the same about it.

"It's too bad you didn't get it. You didn't figure out what I could have brought you. You guys never knew. You never asked me any questions. You guys never figured out who I was. You never even asked. We talked about hamstrings and shoulders and stuff. You guys never did figure it out. It was terrible and it didn't have to be like that. But all of that having been said, we were just a couple of football decisions from being on the other side of it.

"What I screwed up was, I should have been coaching when I was there like I do now. I never coached the defense when I was there, like I do now. I made a tactical mistake in best presenting what I have to offer my team. I do it here. I've been coaching the defense ever since. I should have done that. But I tried to run it from the top, and that's not my strength. My strength is ball coaching."

Staying put?

Carroll failed in one year as head coach of the Jets prior to his tumultuous stint in New England. There is widespread perception that he secretly longs to return to the NFL to prove everyone wrong, but he disputes the notion even though he interviewed with the Dolphins last winter.

"I don't care about that at all," he says. "I've already been there. The people they should wonder about are the ones that haven't been there. I know exactly what it is. I've got a really good hold on it. I'm very comfortable not going and staying here. I'm in a prime-time situation here. I love being in California. I love the school. I love the winning. We get 92,500 people every single game. I mean, come on. How good does it have to get before you screw it up? So, I'm just working to make sure we can keep this thing working. We're just trying to win forever."

Forever starts Saturday night in Lincoln, Neb.

Dan Shaughnessy can be reached at dshaughnessy@globe.com.