Lane Kiffin
I don’t fault the guy for leaving and going to USC but I can fault USC for hiring him. I’m still not sure that he’s proven he can coach at this level let alone take over the top football program in the entire country. We can talk about the SEC and all that but USC is the benchmark or at least was. There has to be a very long list of coaches who would be able to take this team quickly and be able to do things the right way but instead Kiffin gets the job and immediately questions arise. Everyone knows the guy lives in the gray when it comes to recruiting and it obviously has worked for him so the questions that have come up in the past couple days surely aren’t surprising. In fact, we would all be surprised if he didnt’ have Orgeron call those potential recruits. We’ve come to expect that from Lane Kiffin in recruiting but we still don’t know what to expect of him as a coach. Tennessee got better this past year but they were still years away from being Florida, Alabama or LSU consistently. He’s no Nick Saban is what I’m trying to say.
I know USC needed to do something quickly because the signing period is weeks away and they had no coach. We know they looked several different places and it just surprises me they’d make this selection considering what the basketball team went through with Tim Floyd and what the football team is going through now with being looked at a little bit. Kiffin’s name is the lightning rod of the NCAA and now he’s going to the school with arguably the most talent of them all in the brightest city in the West. I just can’t see this going well. Kiffin had a job in California before as coach of the Raiders and that didn’t last long. He’s got a career winning percentage of somewhere near .400 yet somehow that qualified him to coach USC. You can’t tell me thats the best you can do?
I won’t lie when I say I hope that he falls flat on his face here and ends up as a recruiting coordinator for Appalachian St. He won’t though because he can talk the talk and he is one of those guys who will land on his feet. We all know he has the connections for it.
As the ESPN writer said “he’s a guy that was born on 3rd base but acts like he’s the one who hit the triple.”.
