I Think They Missed a Spot

More than one source of college football news, including The New York Times, used the phrase "cleaning house" when discussing the hiring of former Trojans quarterback Pat Haden as new athletic director, which struck me as rather odd. Yes, Mike Garrett is out as AD and I do not think anyone will miss his bluster and they-are-picking-on-poor-USC stance regarding first the investigation into wrongdoing at the athletic department at Southern Cal and then the subsequent penalties. But how is Haden representative of a soon-to-be clean slate when Haden is not only a member of the school's board of trustees, but was considered an insider at Heritage Hall who supposedly had more say in the recent hiring of Lane Kiffin as head coach than Garrett, who had earned figurehead status after the numerous scandals, large and small, that developed under his watch? And even if it is not true that Haden had a role in Kiffin's hiring, how can anyone give the Trojans credit for cleaning house when Kiffin still resides in the coach's office?

Give credit to the school for cleaning house when they, in fact, remove everyone who was part of the establishment there of a climate that fostered, at best, a situation where higher ups looked the other way when cheating occurred.

View From Bennett Avenue

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.

Should He Stay or Should He Go?

He really didn't have a chance. Sure Aaron Corp has been on campus for two years and sure he has gone through plenty of drills with the vaunted Trojans staff, both past and present. He stands 6'4 and was a top-flight prospect himself coming out of Orange County in 2006. But how was he to beat out the more highly-touted Matt Barkley to become the starting quarterback for Southern Cal, when no one really wanted him to? He was always going to be looking over his shoulder. Every incompletion would have produced a groan; every pick a shout for the kid. And after choosing John David Booty over the highly-touted Mark Sanchez in 2006, and then watching Sanchez depart after only one season once he did become a starter two years later, head coach Pete Carroll was not going to miss out on any chance to showcase the expected heir to the throne of great quarterbacks at USC--Barkley. So Corp's recent injury, a crack to a bone below the left knee, was a convenient excuse to do the inevitable. Chose the kid you are in love with now and not delay the inevitable.

But what should Corp do? Should he stick around and enjoy all of the benefits of being a USC Trojan? Or should he transfer to a school that will give him a shot at a starting gig? The Trojans pride themselves on recruiting too much talent and setting up battles for starting jobs. The losers are almost always highly-regarded players. Except for the rare transfer--Emmanuel Moody, Vidal Hazelton among few others--they stick around to continue the fight and provide uncommon depth. Even at quarterback, a position where the subs can rarely play, they tend to stay and in one celebrated case a USC backup got drafted and developed into a starting professional quarterback (Matt Cassel).

But that was a rare case. If Corp's goal is to play in the NFL, then he really has no choice. He has to go, and go soon. In a similar situation, Jevan Snead as a true freshman lost the battle to become the starter at quarterback at Texas to redshirt freshman Colt McCoy back in 2006. While McCoy was throwing for 2570 yards and a whopping 29 touchdowns that year, Snead was limited to mop-up duty. With McCoy entrenched as the starter, Snead transferred to Mississippi and led the Rebels to the Cotton Bowl in his first season. With another fine season this year he will be set up financially with professional riches.

Corp does not possess the talent of Snead, but after this season he will have had three years of USC training under his belt and two years of eligibility left. He will be a desireable commodity to programs looking for a new quarterback for the 2011 season. Or, if he does not wish to take off another year, he can do what Joe Flacco and others have done before him and transfer to a lower level so as not to sit out a season. Tired of backing up Tyler Palko at Pittsburgh, Flacco transfered to Delaware and played himself into a no. 1 pick.

But he must choose wisely. Corp needs to just look at a fellow Trojan to learn that there are right programs to transfer to and wrong programs to transfer to. Like Barkley, Mitch Mustain was considered the top quaterback his senior year in high school--all of the touts had him ranked higher than fellow high school senior Tim Tebow--before commiting to Arkansas. His time there deserves its own post, but when deciding on a new school he chose one that already had Mark Sanchez and new recruit Corp. But Mustain's ego and meddling parents did not see a problem with those players, despite the leg up Sanchez would have in the USC system. And so Mustain is now third string. Corp would do much better for himself if he let potential playing time and coaching dictate his choice and not his own ego.