Pete Carroll is set to be honored this weekend.

But not for anything the Super Bowl champion coach has accomplished with the Seahawks.

Carroll—who as you may vaguely recall spent nine years as the head coach of the USC Trojans before bolting for Seattle and the NFL – will be inducted into the USC Hall of Fame during halftime of the Trojan’s game Saturday against the Oregon State Beavers.

While he’s easily the most high-profile inductee in this year’s 16-member HoF class, and the Seahawks are on a bye week, Carroll has said he won’t attend the ceremony. Still, the coach compiled a 97-19 record at USC, and led the Trojans to seven consecutive Pac-10 Conference titles, not to mention back-to-back AP national championships in 2003 and 2004. The fans in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum know him well.

Which, of course, begs the question: How will Carroll be received? Sure, his success at USC is well documented (see above), but Carroll also left the school a mere five months before the NCAA harshly punished USC for rules violations under his tenure. The sanctions included a two-year bowl ban and a significant loss of scholarships. Many wins were vacated, and Reggie Bush—the star running back at the center of the scandal—was shamed into giving back his 2005 Heisman Trophy thanks to the mess. The USC football program has yet to dig out of the hole, as evidenced by an embarrassing loss to Boston College just two weeks ago. As Ted Miller of ESPN points out, “While those NCAA sanctions will no longer yoke the program going forward, they are still being painfully felt, see a scant 61 scholarship players available Saturday against Oregon State.”

All of that said, according to Shotgun Spratling, who extensively covers the Trojans for the SB Nation “Conquest Chronicles” blog, if USC fans harbor any ill will, it’s not directed at Carroll. He tells Seattle Weekly that, “For the vast majority of USC fans, Pete Carroll still has a special place in their hearts.”

“While a small pocket of fans place part of the blame for the recent sanctions on Carroll and some think he scooted out of town because he knew the NCAA was about to come down hard on USC, the majority of Trojan fans you ask would instead blame the NCAA or Reggie Bush rather than Carroll,” says Spratling. “When he is announced for the Hall of Fame on Saturday … he will undoubtedly get a thunderous ovation only surpassed if he was actually in the stadium.

“No doubt about it,” Spratling concludes, “the fans will be cheering for him Saturday night.”