LOS ANGELES - Pete Carroll's wilderness year began in a parking lot in Foxboro, Mass.

It seems like another millennium now. Actually it was Jan. 3, 2000.

Patriots owner Bob Kraft fired Carroll the day after New England beat Baltimore to finish 8-8. Carroll spoke to his players and coaches, then walked into the cold and talked to reporters, before he drove off to his place in oblivion.

Oh-for-2. The NFL gives few third chances. The first time, when the Jets fired Carroll after one 6-10 season, was a shock. This was closer to dread. Carroll saw this coming. He just didn't know what lay beyond it.

"It (getting fired) was tough, because I didn't agree with it," Carroll said in mid-December, sitting on a wall behind Heritage Hall on a chilly evening, after practice. "I still don't. I was (ticked). I didn't know what would happen, but I needed a little time."

On the 347th day after Foxboro, Carroll was at another press conference, explaining to an incredulous media corps and a furious fan base why he would be the answer at USC.

Those who swore Carroll would never coach even one Rose Bowl will sit today and watch him coach his fourth, in seven seasons.

Carroll is 75-14 at USC with six BCS bowls and six Pac-10 titles or co-titles in his past six years.

And the shadows, if not forgotten, are gone.

"The North Carolina job came open and I'd always thought they had great potential there," Carroll said quietly. "But I couldn't get anybody to return my calls."

Since 2001, North Carolina is 30-54.

"But I had all kinds of projects going," Carroll said. "Pat (Kirwan, a former aide with the Jets) and I talked about coming up with some sort of football internet site, with a lot of coaches and experts, just putting a lot of things out there. We talked about a network that's a lot like the NFL network today.

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"Probably the most fun I had that year was the annual neighborhood Thanksgiving football game. I got to be the quarterback all day, because our team kept winning."

As spring begat summer and fall, Carroll kept drifting back to a sideline. This would be the first autumn of his life when he wouldn't be crossing one.

The first step came when Carroll visited Pat Kelly, a former Jet. Kelly was the director of equities at Bear Stearns' Manhattan office. "Ironically, right across the street from the NFL office," said Kirwan, now a columnist for NFL.com.

"I walked in there and felt the buzz," Carroll said. "It felt like a locker room. I started realizing how much I missed it."

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In late August, Carroll and Kirwan abruptly decided to watch USC play Penn State at Giants Stadium.

"We were going to sit in the top row and eat a pretzel," Kirwan said. "But (Giants coach) Jim Fassel got us on the sideline. Pete couldn't stop talking about the USC band. He said, 'You know, they don't have marching bands in the NFL.'"

Then he began making weekend trips to Pittsburgh to watch his son Brennan play. Afterward, he'd sit with Brennan and his Pitt teammates and talk the game.

"Pete would come back and say, 'Hey, you wouldn't believe how sharp these college kids are,'" Kirwan said. "He'd talk about how they understood all of his defensive concepts from the NFL."

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