Less than a year ago, a young brash coach came into the SEC – loudly announcing his presence by calling out the best team in the league and employing a number of questionable recruiting tactics. Needless to say the brain-washed ideology-blinded boosters of his school jumped for joy while the rest of the conference seethed at the arrogance of the new arrival.
Amazingly I am not talking about John Calipari.
As the dominoes continued to fall from Pete Carroll’s epically bad decision to move to Seattle and coach the Seahawks, there was one domino I was not expecting – Lane Kiffin accepting the USC head coaching job.
Only a year into his tenure at Tennessee, I never expected Kiffin to leave one of the most passionate fan bases in the country to go back to USC. At Tennessee he had the backing of school re-emerging from the stagnating pool that was the final years of the Phil Fulmer era, played in the best conference in football, a backyard filled with the best players in the country and built-in headline inducing rivals in Alabama and Florida on his schedule every year. In short, he was on his way to becoming deified by one of the most ravenous fan-bases in the country like Nick Saban has been in Alabama.
Instead he returns to USC to become ‘the guy who coached after Pete Carroll’. Sure, he will have continued success as he slowly empties the cupboards of Carroll’s annual top-five recruiting classes but has anything this guy done foreshadowed him keeping USC at the level it is currently?
Not to mention the always on the horizon possibility that the NCAA could finally dust off their investigation of Reggie Bush and impose sanctions on the Trojans.
Looking at Kiffin’s career objectively and the best comparison I can come up with is that he is the Jay Cutler of football coaches. He is young, brash and has never won anything yet continues to convince people he knows what he is doing. He left his first job after a blow up with management that in hindsight appears to be as much his fault as the seemingly crazy owner.
By now, it seems like a lifetime ago but we must remember USC is not pre-ordained to be a college football powerhouse. Before Pete Carroll came they were an also-ran in the Pac-10 still trading on the glory days in the 1970’s.
they came to Florida State in 1998 and the most memorable thing about that 30-10 drubbing was that Giles Pellerin, who had attended every USC game for 75 years, was introduced and got a standing ovation from the Nole crowd. Really, that is it. Back then beating USC was on par with beating Louisiana Tech for us – just another patsy to practice on until Miami or Florida came to town.
Speaking of the Gators, it is pretty obvious they are the big winners out all of this. Beside the inevitable shifting of recruiting commitments from Tennessee to UF that will stream out over the next couple weeks, there is also the feeling that this is the anointing of UF as the owners of the SEC East for the foreseeable future. There are no challengers left for UF – whether “Tin Man” Meyer ever gets a heart or not. Georgia are perennial underachievers with a 9 win ceiling that are happy if they keep the losing deficit at the World’s Largest Cocktail party under 20. Steve Spurrier will never get the talent in Columbia to compete with UF. And now Tennessee is a colossal mess.
This doesn’t even factor in the psychological edge that comes along with the one person in the SEC that called out UF, scurrying with his tail between his legs back to southern California where football ranks on the priority scale just below a good fish taco.
So, in this one move, it seems to me that we have sealed the fate of two of the biggest programs of this decade. USC will spiral down into mediocrity while the beautiful people migrate away from the Coliseum to cheering on the new Los Angeles Jaguars in a couple years. And the Gators become perennial SEC Championship game participants and BCS Title game candidates.
Maybe I am being too kind to Lane by comparing him to Jay Cutler.
