Now who thought college football was done once the BCS title game ended? The domino effect that goes into play once a big name coach changes jobs is shaking up the sport right now.
Now I do not have too much good to say about Pete Carroll, except that he produced wins. I will give him his due in that regard. But his getting in bed with marketers and agents, while allowing his kids to run roughshod over the community was appalling. The USC family did not care as they wanted to return to national championship contention after a long drought. So they looked the other way. That must have applied to other sports too as their basketball program is imploding as well due to past violations. After an unbelievable delay, the NCAA is threatening to present their case in 2010. It is long overdue and has to be a solid one after all of these years.
So, the Trojans, faced with the absence of the coach on whose watch the alleged NCAA violations occurred, had two choices. Go with the goody two-shoes coach as a way to show the NCAA that we will be good boys and girls from now on. Or do what USC ended up doing--hire a guy who is currently under NCAA investigation for what he did at another school! Huh? And he may as well bring back the recruiting coordinator who had the same job at USC when the alleged violations began.
What is even funnier is that the new head guy, Lane Kiffin, has never won anything. Norm Chow built the Trojans offense into the powerhouse it became in 2005. But that year he had moved on after Carroll showed him less and less respect--which was especially ridiculous as Carroll's reclamation work with USC would have been ten times harder without Chow--and the coordinator spot was filled jointly by Kiffin and current Washington coach Steve Sarkisian. With all of the inherited talent they had to work with, including Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart, Kiffin and Sarkisian just had to get the hell out of the way for that unit to score 50 pts per game. But I digress. Kiffin, somehow, turned a share of a college coordinator job into a head coaching gig with the Raiders. That, of course, blew up in his face. We all gave him a pass for that one--after all it was Al Davis--but fully expected the kid to go back and learn some more about this head coaching thing. Instead he lands one of the better jobs in college football as head man with Tennessee, where he proceeds in 14 months to embarrass himself and the program--and win one more game than he lost. The teams he beat this year? Western Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, South Carolina, Memphis, Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Not one of them whiffed the final top 25 and three will have new head coaches in 2010.
So, good luck USC. You are going to need it. And as for Tennessee, make sure your next hire is someone who can both coach and represent your university in the best possible light. They are still out there...I think.
What the hell is USC thinking in Hiring Kiffin? USC football already is under investigation and faces sanctions. You would think they would attempt to hire a coach with a squeaky clean image, and not a rules-flouting punk like Kiffin.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what USC achieves by thumbing its nose at the NCAA. There's nothing positive in it.
But in regards to itself, Kiffin is no coaching genius. I can't imagine why fans in Tennessee are upset. They should be thrilled the guy is walking away. His damage to the program will be minimal. He did nothing as a coordinator at SC except keep reggie bush on the sidelines in the national title game against Texas, was an over-his-head loser at Oakland, and a one-year patsy in Tennessee.
This hire makes absolutely no sense.
But the major unasked question during this entire circus is how does USC AD Mike Garrett keep his job?
He allows his programs to run wild and then throws his coaches under the bus when the NCAAA turns up the heat.
His handling of the Carrol-Kiffin situation is more than enough proof that Garrett has to go. He's an embarrassment to USC.
As a Trojan alum and huge fan, I could not agree more with the comments about Garrett. he would have been gone years ago if he hadn't totally lucked into hiring the most successful football coach of the decade. I say "lucked into" because at the time Carroll was Garrett's fourth or fifth choice for the job and we know he didn't hire him because he saw some latent genius waiting to explode. If he had thought that, Carroll would have been his first choice. Garrett just closed his eyes and threw a dart. That aproach worked out so well for him that he's done it again. Kiffin's coaching potential must be very highly thought of or he wouldn't have gotten the chances he's gotten, no matter who his daddy is, but once again he is a fourth or fifth choice hire by a clueless AD who may end up running a proud athletic tradition completely into the ground.
ReplyDeleteThe power to name a new coach was supposedly taken out of Garrett's hands by a cabal of influential alumni. I do not know if it is true, but I can see rich alums purposely hiring someone that would both keep things in the football office running the same way and allow them to thumb their noses at the NCAA.
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