The USC football program will receive two-year postseason ban, a reduction in scholarships and a forfeiture of wins from at least the 2004 season when the NCAA releases it sanctions on Thursday, a source told ESPN’s Shelley Smith.
I’ll have more on this topic when more details are released, but here are some quick-hit thoughts:
- Looks like Pete Carroll got out of So Cal at the right time. Think he knew the shit storm that was about to come down on the program when he decided to take the Seahawks job in January? Many people thought it was odd timing for Carroll to head back to the NFL when the decision was announced, but something tells me Pistol Pete had an inkling that something was about to go down and decided to hightail it out of town.
Before Captain Wiseguy points out the obvious, yes, I’m just speculating. But let’s be realistic about the situation: Carroll, who has been courted many, many, many times throughout the years by NFL teams, decides to accept the Seahawks’ head coaching job five months prior to USC getting a two-year postseason ban. Coincidence? I think not.
- I wonder how Lane Kiffin feels about leaving Tennessee in the dust to take over for Carroll at USC now. If you listen closely enough, you can her Vols fans laughing in the distance.
- That 2004 USC squad is highly considered one of the greatest college football teams of all time, so the fact that the program will have to forfeit their 13 wins from that season is jarring to say the least. People will still remember how powerful that team was, but from now on, it’ll always be associated with this ban.
- Soooo, is Oklahoma now the 2004 (or 2005) BCS National Champion? How does that work?
Al Davis has finally decided to cut the cord on JaMarcus Russell, who is currently competing with Ryan Leaf for biggest draft bust in NFL history. The 24-year-old quarterback was officially released on Thursday, just three seasons after he was selected as the top pick in the 2007 draft.
Somewhere, Lane Kiffin is laughing. He was the one that urged Davis not to draft Russell in ’07, but against his head coach’s wishes, Al selected the LSU product anyway. Russell finishes his career in Oakland with a 7-18 record, a 52.1 completion percentage, an 18:33 touchdown-to-interception ratio and a 65.2 passer rating. Comparing the numbers, I think Craig Krenzel may have produced better numbers.
At this point, there won’t be many teams (if any) lining up to sign the former first overall pick. Even a quarterback-hungry team like the Bills will likely stick with what they currently have on their roster, despite the fact that Russell can throw the ball the length of 87 football fields while sitting down. Everyone outside of Al Davis realizes that if a quarterback isn’t accurate, doesn’t want to work hard and takes half a season to get into shape, then it doesn’t matter how far he can throw.
It seems as if Russell just wants to take his big payday from the NFL and walk off into the distance with it. And maybe that’s exactly what he should do.
USC head coach Lane Kiffin was apparently a little confused by comments made last month by Tennessee Athletic Director Mike Hamilton. Hamilton said Kiffin wound up not being a “good cultural fit” for UT.
From GoVolsExtra.com:
“I don’t really know exactly what that means,” said Kiffin, who was UT’s coach for just 14 months. “I don’t think at the end of day that has anything to do with whether you score points or whether you win games. Where you’re from? I don’t know. That’s just my opinion.
“Is Nick Saban from Alabama? Is Urban Meyer from Florida? Those are two of the best coaches in the country. So I don’t think that really means anything.”
What’s funny about Hamilton’s comments is that he never would have made them had Kiffin stayed at Tennessee and won. Had Kiffin won with the Vols, he probably would have done so in the same brash manner he exhibited when he first set foot on UT’s campus. But since he was a cocky, abrasive loudmouth that didn’t fulfill his promises, all of a sudden he wasn’t a “good cultural fit.”
I’m no Lane Kiffin apologist, but I think Hamilton is reaching here. Steve Spurrier is from Florida and was one of the cockiest head coaches the SEC had ever seen. Yet the conference embraced him because they either loved him or loved to beat him.
“His skill set is off the chart,” Clarkson said. “I’ve never seen anyone at his age do what he’s been able to do.”
Clarkson then directed Kiffin to a video of Sills that is making the rounds on YouTube.
Kiffin watched it and called him back immediately.
“He was like, ‘This kid is incredible. How old is he again?’
“I was like, ‘That’s the problem, he’s 13.’ ”
A couple of hours later, the Sills family called Kiffin and they spoke for the first time. USC had always been Sills’ dream school, according to his father, David Sills IV.
“I’m as shocked as anybody,” Sills’ father said. “I was just talking with friends yesterday about what it’ll be like four years from now when David goes through the recruiting process. I never expected this to happen so soon.
This video was taken before Lane Kiffin sat down to speak to the Knoxville media about his decision to leave Tennessee to take the USC job. One television reporter (or producer?) doesn’t want to agree to Kiffin’s terms. It’s pretty funny to watch thirty people trip over each other trying to get a stupid press conference started.
Back in October 2007, the media jumped to call Al Davis everything from “crazy” to “senile” when the Raiders owner fired Kiffin under the most bizarre circumstances imaginable. With an overhead projector exhibiting a hand written letter he had penned to Kiffin, Davis referred to his then 32-year-old coach as a “flat-out liar” and said he was guilty of “bringing disgrace to the organization.”
On June 8, 2009, the Raiders organization issued a statement about Lane Kiffin’s hiring at Tennessee. The statement read: “Lane Kiffin is a flat-out liar. He lied to the team, he lied to the fans, and he lied to the media. He will try to destroy that university like he tried to destroy the Raiders.”
At the time it was released, the media viewed it as nothing more than sour grapes. In hindsight, Davis was right on the money. Once a weasel, always a weasel.
Now, the rat will have his cheese (and some wine) in Southern California.
After he fired Kiffin in ’07, Davis famously noted, “It hurts because I picked the guy. I picked the wrong guy.”
The University of Tennessee now knows just how Davis felt.
And if history tells us anything, so — eventually — will USC.
See, I told you Al Davis wasn’t crazy.
It is amazing how Lane Kiffin stormed into Knoxville, made all of these brash comments about turning UT into a winner, attacked other SEC coaches, brought in some recruits that would later be arrested for armed robbery and then left the program after only one season. That’s freaking unbelievable.
What better way to show that you’re angry at the head coach that left your team high and dry then to burn a mattress?
I’ve always wanted to see the expression on the guy’s face that volunteered to burn his mattress when he woke up the next morning and didn’t have a bed anymore.
“Troy…Troy!”
“What?”
“What the hell happened to my bed man? It’s gone!”
“Dude, you burned it in the protest last night. Don’t you remember?”
“F**k no I don’t remember! What the hell, man!”
“Yeah, you wanted to do it to protest Lane Kiffin’s departure.”
In rather surprising news, USC has tabbed former Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin to fill the position vacated by Pete Carroll, who signed a contract over the weekend to coach the Seattle Seahawks.
From ESPN.com:
“We are really excited to welcome Lane Kiffin back to USC,” Garrett said in a statement. “I was able to watch him closely when he was an assistant with us and what I saw was a bright, creative young coach who I thought would make an excellent head coach here if the opportunity ever arose. I’m confident he and his staff will keep USC football performing at the high level that we expect.”
He was a member of the USC coaching staff from 2001 to ’06, first as wide receivers coach and then as offensive coordinator under Carroll.
Kiffin will bring his father and defensive coordinator, Monte Kiffin, and assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron to Southern California with him.
The hiring is surprising, but what isn’t surprising is the way Kiffin left Tennessee after just one season. The fact of the matter is that college coaches come and go as they please. As long as there is more money and a bigger opportunity to be had, coaches will always be a threat to leave.
That said, it never ceases to amaze me that coaches can walk into a recruit’s home and talk about commitment, loyalty and family, and then leave a program at the drop of a hat. There is something incredible wrong with the process, but it has become such a norm that nobody is surprised by it anymore. As the clichéd response goes: It is what it is.
I wonder if some in Knoxville are secretly glad to see Kiffin go. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and never seemed like a great fit for UT. Considering he helped Carroll make USC’s program a success earlier this decade, it stands to reason that he will be a much better fit in Southern Cal, but we’ll see. It’ll also be exciting to see what Monte Kiffin can do with the talent he’ll have on the defensive side of the ball at SC.
This is pure conjecture on my part, but if I’m venturing a guess as to whom will replace Kiffin at Tennessee, I’d say Jon Gruden might be a great fit. He was a graduate assistant there from 1986 to 1987 and also met his wife at UT as well. If he wanted to take a crack at the collegiate level, Knoxville might just be a solid fit.
According to a report by ESPN.com, Tennessee is under investigation for using recruiting “hostesses” to help lure high school football prospects to come to the university.
The NCAA appears to be strongly interested in Tennessee’s use of hostesses — students who are part of a university group that hosts prospective students on campus visits, including athletes. It was not clear whether the university sent the hostesses to visit the football players, the newspaper reported.
In one case, hostesses traveled nearly 200 miles to attend a football game at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., one of the nation’s best high school football programs, where at least three potential Tennessee recruits were playing, according to the report.
Two of Lattimore’s high school teammates, Brandon Willis and Corey Miller, have orally committed to Tennessee. Lattimore said the hostesses were “real pretty, real nice and just real cool” and thinks they had “a lot” of influence in his teammates making oral commitments, according to the report.
“I haven’t seen no other schools do that,” Lattimore said, according to the report. “It’s crazy.”
According to the article, Tennessee has committed at least six secondary NCAA violations since Lane Kiffin took over as head coach.
It might be hard to gather evidence in this situation outside of talking to the young recruits, but considering Tennessee has committed six violations one would assume that the NCAA is going to take their time investigating these “hostess” allegations.
