Column: Pete Carroll likely to receive a warm welcome at Coliseum despite what happened at USC when he coached there

Listening to Pete Carroll talk this week about the controversial timing of his departure from USC was similar to reading how John Wooden claimed to have known nothing about what Sam Gilbert did to help the UCLA basketball program.

“Had I known what was going on and what was going to come around, I never would have been able to leave,” Carroll said on a conference call.

You wanted to believe him. You really did.

The absence of major championships this decade has reminded Los Angeles of how special Carroll’s USC teams were. The Lakers last won in 2010. The Dodgers are closing in on the three-decade anniversary of their most recent World Series crown.

And that was only part of it. Carroll wasn’t the stereotypical no-nonsense football coach; he looked as if he enjoyed himself as he won a couple of national championships in his nine seasons at USC. He was fun. He made you laugh. He was one of the city’s last rock-star coaches; Phil Jackson was the other.

Which is why Carroll is expected to receive a warm welcome back when he returns to the Coliseum on Sunday as the coach of the Seattle Seahawks. If Carroll is booed as he emerges from the stadium tunnel, it will be because he’s the coach of the Rams’ opponent, not because of anything he did or didn’t do while at USC.

Still, questions remain and there’s really nothing anyone can say or do at this point to make them vanish. The questions provide an unsatisfactory ending to a story that otherwise reads like a fairy tale, about a charismatic and community-minded coach who defied the odds by building a dynasty in an era of parity.

Carroll has always maintained that he and the university knew nothing about the improper benefits Reggie Bush received while playing for the Trojans. And he reiterated this week that he didn’t leave USC in 2010 because he knew the school was on the verge of crippling sanctions delivered by the NCAA.

“I was already gone by the time all of that stuff came out,” Carroll said. “I felt bad about that.

“That’s not the way this thing came down. I know there’s a lot of people who have different opinions about that because they don’t know.”

Carroll pointed a finger at the NCAA, saying college sports’ governing body imposed unfair penalties, which included the loss of 30 scholarships. The Trojans were also subjected to a two-year bowl ban.

“I think it was really off-base and out of line the way that they handled it, and felt like it was a miserable thing to do to a great university,” he said. “I’ve always felt kind of upset about that.”

The sanctions handicapped Carroll’s successor, Lane Kiffin, which, in turn, led to the hiring of train-wreck Steve Sarkisian.

The program emerged from probation in 2014, but hasn’t completely recovered. When the Trojans played their home opener last week, the Coliseum was half empty. The morning start time and the opponent, Utah State, had something to do with that. But the 46-point loss to Alabama seven days earlier did, too.

The empty rows of seats offered evidence of the lasting effects of the sanctions, and also served as a reminder of the special atmosphere Carroll created while he was there.

That’s how USC has decided to remember him.

“The people he brought in are legendary,” Trojans Coach Clay Helton said. “I think of the Matt Leinarts and the quarterbacks and the skill players and the linebackers. Just the whole aura of what he built and championship football that he’s built, it’s one of those things that’s going to be remembered in the history of college football. He built something really special.”

The NCAA sanctions? The USC community isn’t holding that against Carroll.

“He did so much for this university and invested so much of himself and really put this university . . . it was already up there, but he put it to a dynasty level,” Helton said.

Carroll, who went on to win a Super Bowl with the Seahawks, received an honorary degree from USC last year. He was later inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame.

While Bush forfeited his Heisman Trophy and is a nonentity at USC, Carroll has an outdoor lounge in the John McKay Center named after him.

Carroll made it easy for the university to embrace him. While he was at USC, he founded A Better LA, a nonprofit that works to eliminate gang violence. He continues to speak fondly about the nine years he spent at the school.

His trademark enthusiasm was evident when he recalled how, during one of his first seasons at USC, he was alongside Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott as the Trojans walked from their locker room to the Coliseum field.

“There’s nothing like walking down this tunnel,” Carroll recalled Lott telling him.

Carroll said he was moved by Lott’s words.

“I never forgot that he said that,” Carroll said. “It really impacted me from that point on, being able to coach there.”

Carroll also talked about a 27-0 victory over UCLA at the Coliseum in 2001, his first season. The game drew an announced crowd of 88,588 fans.

“The first UCLA game that we played at night was the first time that the Coliseum really filled up and everybody was there,” Carroll said. “It was being in the midst of the crowd and atmosphere that I kind of hoped it would be. It took a while during that season to get people coming, but obviously the UCLA-’SC game draws a great crowd and that was kind of the start of the big enthusiasm, the big excitement about being at the Coliseum, I thought.”

It’s a nice story, isn’t it? If only it had a more fitting ending.

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com

Follow Dylan Hernandez on Twitter @dylanohernandez