SI.com's Stewart Mandel also had a pretty good take on Lane Kiffin. It's a bit too long to run the whole thing but here are a few of my favorite points. I'll wrap up my commentary at the bottom.
Lane Kiffin brings circus to USC; how long will this act last?
Stewart Mandel/SI.com
Lane Kiffin created quite the stir during his 14 months as an SEC coach. He jabbed with rival coaches, angered the commissioner, criticized the refs, broke a few NCAA rules ... then caused a student riot upon his departure.
All that for seven wins.
Kiffin is ditching Tennessee after just one season to replace his mentor, Pete Carroll, back at USC. If you're a Vols fan, you have every right to be mortified.
Trojans fans, too.
In an age of mercenary coaches like Nick Saban and Bobby Petrino, Kiffin's sudden about-face is hardly unique. The difference is, those guys had actually accomplished something.
Kiffin marched into Knoxville armed with big talk and bigger plans to stockpile the nation's top recruits, take down Florida and turn Tennessee back into a national power. He did none of those things, yet somehow he's managed to land an even cushier job.
Not even Don Draper could sell such a phony bill of goods.
At the ripe old age of 34, Kiffin is already on to his third major head coaching job despite having yet to achieve anything of note at any of his previous stops. His biggest calling card is that he's part of a package. Act now and you'll also receive his far more renowned father (Monte Kiffin) and an ace recruiter (Ed Orgeron).
Now we know that to definitely be true, because Kiffin is like a Carroll Mini-Me. He spent six years studying at the altar of the Trojans' wildly successful coach, rising from receivers coach to offensive coordinator. Carroll was so enamored with the younger Kiffin (whose father was Carroll's mentor once upon a time) he pushed out the revered Norm Chow to make way for his ascension. Orgeron, Carroll's recruiting coordinator at the time, developed such a hearty respect for the youngster that he went to work for him at Tennessee.
And remember, not so long ago, Raiders owner Al Davis was so enamored he made the kid a 31-year-old NFL head coach. Less than two years later, upon firing Kiffin, Davis famously called the coach a "flat-out liar." Tennessee AD Mike Hamilton is presumably thinking the same thing right now.
He also appears to be assembling another all-star staff. Orgeron returns to the town where he helped procure some of the sport's most loaded recruiting classes in recent memory. Monte Kiffin -- whose Tennessee defense performed admirably against SEC powers Florida (23 points) and Alabama (12) before fading down the stretch -- will have no shortage of raw athletes at his disposal. And in perhaps the biggest surprise of all, Chow is reportedly heading back across town to reprise the role he played on Carroll's 2003 and '04 national title teams and possibly groom another quarterback protégé, Matt Barkley.
I understand what a dream job USC must be for Lane Kiffin. It's where he learned to be a college coach but a lot of what he learned is artificial. And it only took him a few months in Knoxville to figure that out.
We all wondered what the hell Lane was doing while he was in Knoxville. he was cocky, brash and seemed more interested in breaking NCAA rules than he did breaking NCAA records. But Kiffin wasn't out of control. He was doing what he knew. With the Reggie Bush/O.J. Mayo investigations and Pete Carroll's speedy exit to Seattle it's becoming painfully obvious that playing by their own rules and cocky attitude is the Trojan Athletic Department's modus operandi.
So while we were all miffed when Lane Kiffin was sending the Vol whore squad to pass out handys on the recruiting trail and committing six other secondary violations, he was probably just as miffed. He was leading his program just as Carroll had led USC. But instead of hoisting trophies and being the BCS and ESPN's wonder boy, he got called a cocky buffoon.
Most coaches would question whether it was a good idea to run into USC's burning building head first. But for guys like Kiffin and Ed Orgeron, it's the only existence they understand. They'd never expect the NCAA to come down hard on USC. All they know is they've seen the outside, they've seen the SEC and they didn't like that reality show. So Lane's going back to Cali, back to La La Land. The old gang is back together. Just get them a script and watch the show.
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