Coaches Hot Seat Prediction and Analysis of 2012 Season: USC Trojans and Lane Kiffin
Coaches Hot Seat Prediction and Analysis of 2012 Season: USC Trojans and Lane Kiffin
USC Trojans
Head Coach: Lane Kiffin
Years at USC: 2
Hot Seat Position: #105
Overall Coaching Record: 25 – 13 (.658)
Overall Won/Loss Record at USC: 18 – 7 (.720)
Overall Conference Record at USC: 12 – 6 (.666)
2011 USC Record: Overall: 10 – 2 – Pac-12: 7 – 2
2012 USC Schedule & Coaches Hot Seat Predictions
Sept 1 – Hawaii – W
Sept 8 – Syracuse- W
Sept 15 – at Stanford – L
Sept 22 – California – W
Oct 4 – at Utah – W
Oct 13 – at Washington – L
Oct 20 – Colorado – W
Oct 27 – at Arizona – W
Nov 3 – Oregon – W
Nov 10 – Arizona State – W
Nov 17 – at UCLA – W
Nov 23 – Notre Dame – W
Number of Cupcake Teams Played by USC in 2012: 0 Cupcakes
Coaches Hot Seat 2012 USC Predicted Record: 10 - 2
Coaches Hot Seat Analysis: Before the Oakland Raiders and Al Davis lost their minds and hired Lane Kiffin in 2007 from USC we had seen Lane around the USC practices a few times during the Pete Carroll USC-era and the impression that Kiffin left on us then would be rightly compared to the impression that a half-eaten jelly donut would leave on us today which is….
NO IMPRESSION.
We have a member of Coaches Hot Seat that has several friends within the Oakland Raiders organization (Yes, the place was a nuthouse under Al Davis and isn’t much better today our friend reports) and after Lane Kiffin was hired by Oakland our CHS member went out to a few Oakland practices and watched Kiffin in action coaching-up the Raiders and at our next Sunday night poker game he reported that…
“This Lane Kiffin character doesn’t have a Freaking Clue!”
After Kiffin put up a record of…
5 – 15
…in 1 and a quarter seasons at Oakland our CHS member told us…
“I told you that this Lane Kiffin character didn’t have a Freaking Clue!”
….to which we could only shake our heads up and down to since it did seem that with the Oakland Raiders that Lane Kiffin…
“Didn’t have a Freaking Clue!”
Needless to say we here at Coaches Hot Seat were SHOCKED when there were reports in the press in late November 2008 that the University of Tennessee was going to hire Lane Kiffin to replace the just fired Phillip Fulmer which struck us then as and still is our opinion today was the…
WORST HIRE in I-A College Football since World War II
OK, maybe Notre Dame hiring Gerry Faust was worse…..but only slightly than Tennessee hiring Lane Kiffin!
Why do we think that Lane Kiffin was a terrible hire for the University of Tennessee?
Oh, let us count the ways but the MAIN REASON was that we are talking about the University of Tennessee which in case we are mistaken is in Knoxville, Tennessee and plays in the Southeastern Conference against teams like….
Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, etc…
….and not only had Lane Kiffin done NOTHING in his coaching career to earn or deserve the Tennessee head football coaching job Kiffin also had spent his entire coaching career save 1 year with the Jacksonville Jaguars working on the West Coast of the United States of America and Tennessee hiring ANY COACH in the game of football that had spent his entire coaching career on the West Coast would have been a questionable move, but hiring a guy that had just gotten run out-of-town by the Oakland Raiders because he….
“Didn’t have a Freaking Clue!”
….and hadn’t proved he could even be the head coach at Tennessee State forget the University of Tennessee was nothing but…
Complete Lunacy!
Of course, you know the rest of the story….Lane Kiffin showed up at Tennessee and started popping-off like a typical Californian that was allowed to do whatever the Hell he pleased and pop-off to anyone and everyone when growing up which is the vast majority of children in the Broken State of California right now which have their asses kissed on a regular and daily basis by their parents which are supposed to be the one’s in charge….right?
Just as a sidenote….when we used to live in California we and our wives would often see parents in grocery stores with their small children…5 to 10 years old…and the parents would ask their children in very light voices as if they were asking their approval….
“Would hot dogs be OK for you tonight or do you want hamburgers, or shrimp, or tacos…?”
….and those young California children would say something like…
“No, No, No, No….”
….and the parent would go on kissing their small children’s asses like they were the waiter at a restaurant or something and meanwhile in our houses the wives would decide what ALL of us were going to have for dinner and they would either make or pick-up the dinner and we ate what our wives put on the dining room table and didn’t complain if we knew what was good for us and of course if we were sitting at the table the TV had to be off so sometimes we had to beg-off and take our dinners to be eaten in the TV room because sometime there is a football game on that we CANNOT MISS!
Therein lies the difference between Kissing the Asses of your children and PARENTING and that is our comment on parenting in California which is only ONE of the disasters that is destroying the now Broken State of California and getting back to Tennessee hiring Lane Kiffin and dropping him into Knoxville, Tennessee which we rather doubt that Lane could have found on a map if pressed before getting the Vols job not long after Kiffin was hired he said (From Wikipedia.com on Lane Kiffin):
“On February 5, 2009, Kiffin accused Urban Meyer, the former head coach of the Florida Gators, of violating NCAA recruiting rules while at a Tennessee booster breakfast at the Knoxville Convention Center.
“I’m going to turn Florida in right here in front of you,” Kiffin told the crowd. “As Nu’Keese (Richardson) was here on campus, his phone keeps ringing. And so one of our coaches is sitting in the meeting with him and says, ‘Who is that?’ And he looks at the phone and says, ‘Urban Meyer.’ Just so you know, you can’t call a recruit on another campus. But I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn’t get him.”
While Kiffin accused Meyer of violating NCAA rules, he incidentally violated a Southeastern Conference rule that prevented coaches from mentioning a recruit by name, and his accusations against Meyer were mistaken. Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive issued a public reprimand to Kiffin due to the comment. In addition to the public reprimand by Slive, Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley issued a statement demanding a public apology from Kiffin. Kiffin issued a public apology one day after making the comment. In a statement released by the University of Tennessee, Kiffin wrote, “In my enthusiasm for our recruiting class, I made some statements that were meant solely to excite those at the breakfast. If I offended anyone at the University of Florida, including Mr. Foley and Urban Meyer, I sincerely apologize. That was not my intention.””
Oh, that brings back the memories and makes us laugh out loud!
Of course, after putting up a 7 – 6 record in his ONLY year at Tennessee somehow the folks at the University of Southern California came to the conclusion that they just had to have Lane Kiffin to replace the Seattle Seahawks-bound Pete Carroll which was again a very odd hire to us, but at least USC had the good sense to hire someone that actually knew where Los Angeles was on a map and certainly we cannot fault Lane for taking the USC job when offered…..but we are still thinking today what we were thinking then when we heard Lane Kiffin was headed to USC to replace Pete Carroll:
What the Hell?
Now we move ahead to the Lane Kiffin as the head coach at USC period which we still have to say several times to really believe it…
Lane Kiffin is the head coach at USC
Lane Kiffin is the head coach at USC
Lane Kiffin is the head coach at USC
Lane Kiffin is the head coach at USC
Lane Kiffin is the head coach at USC
….OK, that’s enough….for now…
Lane Kiffin is now going into his third year at USC and he has put up a record of…
Overall: 18 – 7
Pac-12: 12 – 6
…while kind of laboring under the Bogus NCAA sanctions over Reggie Bush and his family getting involved with an agent which is like punishing a father because his son did something wrong but we digress….
We would say overall that Lane Kiffin has done….
OK
….in his two years at USC after taking over for the Great Pete Carroll who put up records of….
2001 – 6 – 6
2002 – 11 – 2 – Pac-10 Title
2003 – 12 – 1 – Pac-10 and National Title
2004 – 13 – 0 – Pac-10 and National Title
2005 – 12 – 1 – Pac-10 Title
2006 – 11 – 2 – Pac-10 Title
2007 – 11 – 2 – Pac-10 Title
2008 – 13 – 1 – Pac-10 Title
2009 – 9 – 4
Overall: 83 – 19
Pac-10: 53 – 14
….over 9 seasons as head coach of the Trojans which is the kind of record that should land Pete Carroll in the College Football Hall of Fame one day and which is a record that Lane Kiffin or any other coach would have a hard time matching at USC.
What then does the future hold for Lane Kiffin at USC?
That is a very difficult question to answer because we believe that the Pac-12 Conference is going to get increasingly tougher in the future with new coaches like Leach, Rodriguez and Graham arriving this season and several other conference teams already playing at a very high level….BUT….we are still talking about USC where any random surfer picked-up near the Huntington Beach Pier could win 7 games a year which means that the expectations bar is going to be set at a very high level for Kiffin at USC and so to this point we would say that Kiffin has BARELY met those high expectations so far.
The 2012 season should be a BIG one for the USC Trojans and Lane Kiffin with an experienced starting QB coming back and a favorable schedule with FOUR games against teams with first-year coaches (Hawaii, Arizona, Arizona State and UCLA) and that means with the amount of talent on this Trojans squad that USC has a baseline of….
9 Wins Minimum
….and if USC plays well against Stanford, Washington, Arizona and Oregon they have a chance to run the table and play for a Pac-12 Title and National Championship.
If USC can get by games at Stanford in Week 3, at Washington in Week 6 and at Arizona in Week 8 then the Oregon – USC game in Week 9 at the LA Coliseum should be a match-up of undefeated teams since the Ducks should easily roll-on to an 8 – 0 start in 2012.
What then exactly are the expectations for Lane Kiffin at USC?
Well, a good friend of ours that has two degrees from USC is up in San Francisco this week hanging out with us at the US Open and we put that very question to him at dinner on Friday night on Kiffin’s expectations at USC and his response was….
“The expectations for USC football are to win the Pac-12 conference title and to be in a position to win the National Championship….every year….and Lane Kiffin has everything if not more than what Pete (Carroll) had with the new John McKay Center almost finished. Either Lane matches what Pete achieved or USC will be looking for a new head coach that can do that because we are not going back to the Hackett – Tollner days.”
Yes, Lane Kiffin is a better coach than he was two years ago…BUT…he will have to keep getting better because as Lane knows very well the expectations and standards at USC are very high indeed and no one would want to see their coaching career end before they hit the age of 40 so that means Fight On Lane….Fight On!
