You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Lane Kiffin Fired at USC.
Mediocrity hasn’t had this long a run since Randy on American Idol.
So I am sitting in a sports bar late Saturday night and it’s embarrassing.
On one of the screens in this half empty beer hall, my alma mater is getting thumped like a plastic drum on Beale Street.
Points are more prevalent than silicone in a Phoenix strip club.
USC’s defense is porous like a spaghetti strainer, allowing rushing backs 7 and 8 yards every time they touch the rock.
The croud in Tempe, Arizona is lunatic fringe, painted maroon, calling themselves goons, and imploring the Sun Devils to beat the mighty Trojans.
They hate the Trojans. Most of the Pac 12 does. Most of the country does. After all, in College football, USC is like the Yankees, or the Cowboys. You either love them or hate them. Only N.D. and Alabama have the same swagger in college football.
That’s because they are big and bad and arrogant and they expect to win championships and by and large they do.
But that is all past tense.
The USC of recent years is a mirage, a figment of a grid iron historian’s imagination.
The Years of Marcus Allen and OJ Simpson and Reggie Bush and Matt Leinert are gone. In their stead, players who fold under pressure and play like damp laundry hanging on a line.
The 2013 Trojans play like their coach, uninspired.
I watch all 100 plus points at home, in a bar, back at home. What a wasted Saturday night. I’d have been better off cooking breakfast for drunk homeless guys coming back to the mission after a hard night of hitting the sauce.
Instead, I go to bed embarrassed by the beat down in the desert.
We get plastered 62-41.
Tiger Woods getting nutted by his wife with a four iron wasn’t this egregious.
USC came into the game with the 4th best defense in the nation. What nation is unclear? The nation of Islam?
What the hell happened? Did my boys forget to bring their hearts onto the field? How can a bunch of future NFL players play this bad?
Coaching!
The loss is the 7th in the last 11th games. Let me re-phrase that: USC HAS ONLY WON 4 OF ITS LAST 11 GAMES!
That’s acceptable for Vanderbilt or Northwestern, or even UCLA, but USC?
USC s 0-2 in the Pac 12.
That’s a hollow feeling for a Trojan. Like watching your wife dirty dance with another guy. Where do I sign the divorce decree again your honor?
I’ve been through rough times before with this damn alma mater of mine.
I was lucky enough to be a senior when Marcus Allen ran for a Heisman Trophy under then great John Robinson.
Those were the Glory years. I was just too young and dumb and full of XXXX to know it.
My first ever collegiate game?
USC vs Oklahoma. The L.A. Coliseum. The blimp over head. National TV at night.
#1 v #2 in the USA.
WOW. Welcome to college kid.
But the mid 80’s were lean. There were forgettable coaches like Ted Tollner and forgettable players like Sean Salisbury, now more famous for taking a “selfie” of his self.
The Trojans use to go to Tempe and other Pac 10 towns like Corvalis and Eugene and Palo Alto where we should sharpen our fangs and drink blood, and then get our Cardinal and Gold asses spanked.
But that all changed when Pete Carroll came.
He instilled the Spirit of Troy and brought home the hardware.
USC always gets the blue chip recruits. We would be a national power if we just got all the kids in Los Angeles to come to school.
But the difference is, Carroll coached these kids up, made them special, got the most of their potential.
That brings me around to the mediocrity that is Lane Kiffin. He is gum on your shoe. He is spinach on your teeth. He is a rash on your ass.
After four tumultuous years as the head of the USC Trojans, one of the most despised coaches in the history of coaching is gone.
Fired before he even got off the bus at 4 am.
That’s the best part of the story.
Your plane lands and the A.D. says “Hey Lane, we need to talk.”
Pat Haden pulled him off the bus and said, Lane, I got some good news and I got some bad news. The Good news, you can work on that honey doo list. The bad news? here’s your pink slip.
You can hear good riddance from Knoxville to South Central to Oakland.
Makes you wonder how he get hired in the 1st place.
All he did was lose in Oakland and incur the wrath of a Al Davis. Remember that shaky, parkinsons induced rant by crazy Al. He ripped Kiffin as the coaching equivalent of the anti-Christ.
Al was a pioneer. He obviously realized he had be fooled by a baby faced con man.
All Kiffin did in Knoxville was lie and lose and incur the wrath of Orange nation.
And then USC steals him away in the middle of the night.
Were we hypnotized? what the hell was USC brass thinking?
Turns out we stole a window washer, a guy who sells fruit on the side of the interstate, a young coach with a hot wife.
But wins and losses?
I’m not sure what the battle plan was when we or anyone hired Lane Kiffin.
What did this guy ever do to get all these high profile gigs anyway?
He did have a 28-15 record in for years at USC, which for most universities is a pay raise.
I think that Barbara Walters could get a USC team to win half its game.
There was something about Kiffin that people hated.
Maybe it was his boyish good looks. Maybe it was the way he seemed uninterested on the side line. Maybe it was the way his teams played uninspired, even though talent flows through USC like hot blondes on the Fox News set.
So I wake up sleepy, the USC loss still a bad taste in my mouth.
Suddenly my phone chirps.
I look at it cautiously.
“Kiffin fired.”
What?
Did that person mean to say that Kiffin needs to be fired?
I quickly turn on ESPN and the big red BREAKING NEWS graphic is scrolling by.
KIFFIN FIRED!
Wow.
I listen to Bob Lee say “The charter arrives at 4 am and Pat Haden hands him his pink slip.”
Colllege analyst Brain Griese says “
“you have to go back a year ago. USC was ranked number 1 in the country and then went 7-6. Matt Barkley under performed. The Defense under performed. And at Georgia Tech they got beat bad. And questions arose in the locker room if the coaches had lost the team. And then an embarrassing loss in the desert. It is not easy to fire a head coach in the middle of the season, in the middle of the night.”
Twitter is a raw barometer of the moment and it is alive and well with Lane Kiffin Fired News.
Based on Lane Kiffin‘s career arc getting jobs he’s unqualified for, this frees him up to succeed Bud Selig.
Lane Kiffin seems like a guy who jerks it in front of a mirror.
“Lane Kiffin is the Miley Cyrus of college football. He’s got no talent, but we can’t take our eyes off of him.” – Paul Finebaum
Under Lane Kiffin, USC Football was two things- Breaking and Bad
Can people now finally stop hiring Lane Kiffin to coach football?
So this season is lost on the field. But there are kids in High School who can change that in a single year.
The right coach will turn this ship around and it doesn’t have to take forever.
The sanctions are behind us and the good times ahead.
Kiffin Fired.
FIGHT ON.
Life’s Crazy™