USC: SOLID, THEN SUPER.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

When Pete Carroll faces up to the challenge of keeping the USC football team at the level it climbed back to last season, he finds inspiration not in the consistent greatness of Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno or the Trojans' own beloved John McKay.

I hope this won't bring USC fans down from their eight-month high.

Carroll finds inspiration in Marv Levy, the old Buffalo Bills head coach.

Carroll remembers how, on his annual visits to Buffalo as the New York Jets' defensive coordinator in the early 1990s, he would stand on the field and look up in admiration at the Bills' expanding row of AFC championship flags.

Where the rest of us would have seen symbols of disappointment - the Bills reached four Super Bowls in a row but lost every one - Carroll saw the fabric of excellence.

``I thought, 'Boy, Marv has really got it done!' '' Carroll said this week.

Not quite, a fan might say.

But, then, fans want nothing short of Super Bowl victories or, in the case of college football, national championships.

Coaches are more realistic about how hard it is to stay close to the top in the era of payroll caps or, at the colleges, scholarship limits.

Carroll has spent the summer trying to cool off USC fans who saw last season's 11-2 record and No. 4 final ranking (both its best since 1979) and Carson Palmer's Heisman Trophy (its first since Marcus Allen's in 1981) as proof The Trojans Are Back.

``I don't think they're appreciating (my) caution,'' Carroll said with a grin.

With the Levy comparison, though, Carroll has found the correct standard for judging his Trojans in the seasons just ahead - high, not obnoxiously high.

``We haven't recaptured anything over the long term until we've accomplished something over the long term,'' Carroll said a few days before the eighth-ranked Trojans' season opener Saturday at sixth-ranked Auburn. ``I think you're looking at three, four, five years before you can look back and say you've accomplished something.''

That's when he recalled his reverence for Marv Levy's flags.

``Everyone wants to win the Super Bowl, but when you can show that kind of consistency, that stands out in my mind,'' he said. ``That's why winning the Rose Bowl is our goal. Winning the championship of our conference is our goal. If more happens after that, that's great.''

On one hand, Carroll might sound a little too much like Terry Donahue in the 20 years when he tried to persuade UCLA fans to be happy with conference championships.

On the other hand, Carroll is absolutely right.

USC doesn't have to improve on the 2002 season or even match it to lay the groundwork for long-term success under Carroll - and create the launching pad for an eventual national championship. It has to avoid the kind of immediate crash that followed its 9-2-1 record and Pacific-10 Conference championship in 1995 (Keyshawn Johnson's last season).

Lately, a lot of good college football teams have failed to follow up, and they didn't have to replace Palmer (with a sophomore, Matt Leinart), linebacker Troy Polamalu and running backs Sultan McCullough and Justin Fargas.

What's the college equivalent of going to the Super Bowl four years in a row? Finishing in the Associated Press national top 10 four years in a row? Know how many teams did that from 1999 to 2002?

None. It's hard.

What's the standard for a perennial powerhouse? How about finishing in the top 10 six or more times in a decade? Know how many teams did that in recent decades?

In the 1960s: six (including USC). In the '70s: seven (including USC). In the '80s: three. In the '90s: three. It's harder.

Two-thirds of those teams won at least a share of a national championship during the decade in question.

One more set of numbers before you go blind. Since the start of the McKay era in 1960, USC has had back-to-back seasons of eight or more victories four times - and each time, they led to a third, a fourth or an 11th (1972-82, including three national titles).

Being consistently good is the best way to become great.

Would Trojans fans handle a Buffalo Bills run, four consecutive top 10s without a national title?

It would be a nice problem to try to deal with.