Don’t let the reported $2 million per year raise fool you. If USC head football coach Pete Carroll goes to the NFL, it will be for a new challenge.

Carroll is reportedly on the brink of taking the head coaching job with the Seattle Seahawks, leaving behind the plush job of running one of the most revered programs in college football.

USC football is king in the second-biggest market in the country. There’s no NFL team to compete with for attention, so you can’t really beat the prestige that comes with leading the Trojans onto the field for 12 Saturdays a year.

In going to Seattle, Carroll would be leaving behind that atmosphere. But Carroll, who reportedly earned $4.4 million in 2008, would be getting at least $7 million a year.

And while the money would be huge – well, it was already huge, so make it HUGER – Carroll should know as well as anybody that the NFL is a dog-eat-dog world. The potential for long-term earnings is in college, because 95 percent of all coaches in the NFL are gone after three years (don’t look up that stat, because I completely made it up).

Carroll has coached in the NFL before, guiding the New York Jets and New England Patriots for a few years during the 1990s. His record was two games over .500, so I’m sure he feels there’s some unfinished business in the big leagues.

At USC, he’s done everything he can do this side of becoming the next Joe Paterno or Bobby Bowden. It sounds like he’s leaning toward taking his show to the pros.