And here we thought the college football coaching carousel stopped spinning before the bowl games!
For a "coaching change season" that seemed to be progressing rather quietly at the conclusion of the regular season, much has changed over the past week. The dominoes which most thought had all fallen after Brian Kelly left Cincinnati and was replaced by Central Michigan's Butch Jones have continued to tumble into mid-January...and we might not be finished quite yet. At last count, there will be 22 new head coaches in college football in 2010, unexpectedly matching the turnover we saw last year. Included in that count, but still to be filled, are positions at East Carolina and Louisiana Tech. And if either of those jobs goes to another head coach at a top-level program, one more position will open up.
At this rate, football coaches might still be coming and going when March Madness rolls around.
Much of the discussion over the past week has centered upon Southern Cal and Tennessee, thanks mainly to Pete Carroll's surprise departure from Troy to the NFL's Seattle Seahawks. Trojan AD Mike Garrett (or whomever made the subsequent coaching call at SC) apparently went through several names (reportedly Oregon State's Mike Riley, Tennessee Titans; Jeff Fisher, Jacksonville Jaguars' Jack Del Rio, and, apparently, Washington's Steve Sarkisian and Boise State's Chris Petersen) all of whom apparently saying no quicker than Simon Cowell to a tone-deaf audition for American Idol. Until, that is, Tennessee's Lane Kiffin burst upon the scene. Whether SC or Kiffin initiated the contact is a bit confusing, but whatever, after being quickly rebuffed by as many as a half-dozen potential candidates, the Trojans hastily decided that hey wanted to go back to the future and hired Kiffin, a one-time piece of Carroll's staffs during a glorious run. (We'll get to Lane's UT departure in a moment.) Some observers, however, viewed this as equivalent to a Rolling Stones reunion tour minus Mick Jagger, as Carroll was undoubtedly the lead singer in the juggernaut that was the Trojan ensemble in recent years.
Meanwhile, the Vols and AD Mike Hamilton were left holding an empty bag, and started to similarly get rejected by candidates to fill their job, just as SC was missing on its early swings to replace Carroll. After being rejected by Duke's David Cutcliffe and Air Force's Troy Calhoun (imagine Duke and Air Force coaches turning down Tennessee?), as well as Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp (the Longhorns' HC in waiting) and perhaps even Utah's Kyle Whittingham, UT ended up hiring La Tech HC Derek Dooley. And immediately, comparisons and parallels were drawn between the young hires of the Trojans (Kiffin) and the Vols (Dooley).
But is there really much similar about Lane Kiffin and Derek Dooley other than both are football coaches and both come from football families? (Lane completes that family football parlay as also being the son-in-law of former Florida great QB, John Reaves, as well as the son of legendary defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, who just happens to be a Southern Cal alum.) As well as both being the head coach at Tennessee in the same week? Other than that, we'll let you decide upon any similarities between the two.
Before we proceed, we're not sure Dooley is going to do better at UT than Kiffin will at SC; after all, Dooley will be earning his paychecks in the rugged SEC, while Kiffin has a bit less to worry about in the Pac-10. But if we had to bet, we suspect that Dooley will not only be on the job longer than Kiffin, but outperform him as well.
Maybe Kiffin turns into a winning coach after all in L.A.; indeed, it's hard not to win big at Southern Cal, unless you're Paul Hackett or John Robinson on the downside of his career. But at this point, the Kiffin and Dooley career paths bear little resemblance to one another. That's because there are growing indications that Lane Kiffin could turn out to be one of the greatest frauds in coaching history.
Let us digress for a moment and wonder how on earth Kiffin has progressed this far, this fast.
Growing up in a football family, the son of former NC State HC and decorated NFL defensive coordinator Monte, Lane's career seems to be built upon a bizarre case of nepotism run amuck. After attending high school in Minnesota (where dad was coaching with the Vikings), Lane ended up in the mid '90s at Fresno State, which was a curious selection, especially for the son of a respected coach. There would seem to have been plenty of schools for a supposedly bright, young Lane to attend instead of choosing an institution over 1500 miles from home whose course specialties include various forms of agriculture and wine making. From what we can tell, however, Lane didn't enroll at Fresno because he was planning to operate a vineyard. Lane's major at Fresno? Leisure Services Management. Kiffin's various bios also includes mention of him being a Fresno State QB and playing on the Bulldog basketball team, although we cannot recall him performing for either, and have yet to find any evidence of him in FSU's mid '90s basketball rosters.
Derek Dooley? In high school, he was a star TE at Clarke Central in Athens, playing alongside future NFLers such as PK John Kasay, DE Chuck Smith, and WR Willie Green. Dooley, the son of a respected coach (papa Vince was of course the Georgia coach for 25 years) and nephew of another (uncle Bill coached with distinction at North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest), did not consider Fresno State, instead opting for the University of Virginia, founded by none other than Thomas Jefferson. While at UVa, Dooley was a walk-on football player for the legendary George Welsh. Derek did not earn his undergrad degree in Leisure Services Management from Fresno; instead, he earned his bachelor's degree in government and foreign affairs from Virginia, then returned home to Athens to earn his law degree at the University of Georgia. Upon graduation, Derek Dooley passed the Georgia Bar Exam and practiced law for two years Nelson, Mullins, Riley, and Scarborough in Atlanta before deciding that he missed football and wanted to begin a coaching career.
Both the Kiffin and Dooley names certainly helped each get into the coaching field, with Lane starting off as a grad assistant at Fresno and then at Colorado State in 1999. From that wealth of coaching experience, Lane was rewarded with a job in the NFL with the Jaguars in 2000 as a quality control assistant for Tom Coughlin (an old friend of dad Monte) before the newly-hired Pete Carroll, who also wanted to do a favor for old acquaintance Monte, hired son Lane to his Southern Cal staff in 2001. Carroll felt a deep debt of gratitude to the elder Kiffin for mentoring him in the NFL at various stops including Buffalo, Minnesota, and the Jets.
On the other hand, Derek worked the backwaters for a few years after serving as a grad assistant at Georgia in 1996, shuffling off to Dallas and SMU, working as the Mustangs WR coach between 1997-99 while holding the title of assistant recruiting coordinator his final two years. When Nick Saban was hired at LSU in 2000, he tabbed Dooley as his TE coach and recruiting coordinator. In 2003, Dooley became the RB and Special Teams coach, then followed Saban to the NFL with the Dolphins, where Dooley served as Miami's TE coach. After the 2006 season, Dooley was hired by La Tech to replace Jack Bicknell III. Where, in three years in one of the toughest assignments at the BCS level (the closest WAC school to Ruston is New Mexico State, 900 miles to the west), Dooley stabilized the Bulldog program, took it to its first bowl win in 30 years in 2008, and recorded a 17-20 overall mark before UT came calling.
By comparison, Kiffin's career path as an SC assistant was fortuitously paved in gold, a peripheral piece of a remarkable Trojan renaissance authored by Carroll and legendary offensive coordinator Norm Chow, under whom Kiffin worked as the WR coach between 2001-04. Carroll's ego, however, was threatened by the presence of the scholarly Chow, who was getting much of the credit for the SC football rebirth. And after the end of the 2004 national title season, Carroll reportedly informed Chow that he was being demoted, effectively to be replaced as offensive coordinator by Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian (the designated QB coach). Some insiders believe the promotion of Lane was another act of homage to dad Monte by Carroll, who had the luxury of a true Chow disciple, Sarkisian (who played QB at BYU under Chow's tutelage in the '90s), to smooth out the rough spots. Famously, Kiffin is said to have prematurely cleaned out Chow's office when Norm was interviewing for the Tennessee Titans o.c. job (one he eventually landed).
The Trojan offense Chow left behind for Kiffin and Sarkisian in 2005 was one of the best of all-time in college football, but crediting Lane for its prowess would be off the mark. He was handed a loaded gun, not unlike Bill Hodges with Larry Bird's Indiana State basketball team in 1978, an offense that couldn't help but run roughshod with Reggie Bush, especially with Sarkisian around to plot, strategize, and coach QB Matt Leinart. Any offensive coach worth his salt would have set records with that Chow-designed SC attack. Even so, some Trojans remain embittered about Lane's strategy late in the BCS title game loss to Texas, one in which SC blew a late 12-point lead against Texas and Vince Young.
The Kiffin charade continued through the 2006 season, after which Carroll "recommended" Kiffin to Al Davis, who was looking for another Raiders coach after hitting the eject button on the failed Art Shell re-run in 2006. Davis, desperate at the time, and perhaps remembering how he might have prematurely given the boot to another young up-and-comer, Mike Shanahan, way back in 1989, decided to roll the dice and name Lane as his new coach. More than a few observers saw a comparison to similar "recommendations" made by the likes of Don Shula, ridding himself of Wally English (who took over at Tulane in 1983), and Barry Switzer with John Blake (who took over at Oklahoma in 1996).
Of course, both English and Blake failed spectacularly, as did Lane, obviously out of his depth in Oakland with just a 5-15 mark the first 20 games of his Raiders career. The gears grinded after a 4-12 mark in '06, in which Davis wanted Kiffin to resign and forfeit the remainder of his contract salary, but Lane refused. So, four games into the '08 season, Davis not only fired Kiffin "with cause" (and refusing to honor the remainder of Kiffin's contract), but crucified him going ut the door, calling him a "flat-out liar" and "bringing disgrace to the organization" in an unprecedented (for Davis), 45-minute crucifixion of Kiffin at a bizarre news conference. Although Kiffin generated plenty of sympathy from the masses in the aftermath, others sensed something peculiar about the whole debacle. Many observers were dumbfounded, as Davis, with plenty of experience firing coaches, had never reacted as viscerally to a termination. Davis' peculiarities or not, something was obviously terribly amiss in Oakland.
Kiffin wanted back in, somewhere, anywhere, and was reportedly working the phones feverishly as the 2008 season concluded, looking for a new gig. Reportedly, Kiffin contacted Washington after Ty Willingham's ouster, but found that the Huskies had much preferred his old SC comrade, Sarkisian (reportedly based on a Carroll recommendation), for their head coaching job. Kiffin also was reportedly burning the lines to Clemson, where Dabo Swinney had what was then only an interim appointment after the midseason ouster of Tommy Bowden. But somebody who apparently wanted Kiffin in a big job also got the ear of Tennessee AD Mike Hamilton, who, in a shock move, hired Kiffin to replace the ousted Phil Fulmer. Lane would also be bringing his dad, the respected d.c. Monte, with him from Tampa Bay (which, ironically, suffered an inconceivable pratfall once Monte announced he would be leaving at the end of the campaign), as well as another former SC colleague, the combustible DL coach and recruiting dynamo Ed Orgeron, who had been terminated the previous year as Ole Miss' head coach after alternately frightening and disappointing the masses at Oxford.
Controversy quickly followed young Lane to Knoxville, as he began making enemies of almost everyone in the SEC, including Urban Meyer, Mark Richt, and Steve Spurrier, with a serious of snarky insults that stoked the flames in the league and invoking the ire of SEC commissioner Mike Slive. Kiffin came out and accused Meyer of cheating before being forced to apologize, then denigrated Georgia's recruiting efforts on a talk show, then infuriated South Carolina by supposedly telling recruit Alshon Jeffrey that if he chose the Gamecocks, he would end up pumping gas for the rest of his life like all the other players from that part of the state who had gone to South Carolina. A comment, as Al Davis would surely have predicted, denied by Kiffin but confirmed by Jeffrey's high school coach who was listening to the phone call on a speakerphone. All of this before a game ever kicked off with Kiffin as the Vols coach.
On the field, Kiffin's Vols showed signs of promise, but were maddeningly inconsistent. An early home loss to a mediocre UCLA team hardly endeared Kiffin to the orange-clad boosters, and though the Vols responded with a couple of quality efforts vs. Georgia and South Carolina, and nearly knocked off Alabama in Tuscaloosa, the season was hardly a roaring success. Lopsided losses at Ole Miss in November and in the Chick-fil-A Bowl vs. Virginia Tech indicated that UT had a long way to go under Kiffin after a so-so 7-6 debut, with most crediting dad Monte's defensive acumen, as opposed to anything Lane might have done, with getting UT even slightly over .500.
In other words, the jury is still very much out on Lane Kiffin the head coach, now 12-21 in his short career, and "falling up" once more to one of the premier college jobs in the land at Southern Cal. And if Kiffin can turn things around for himself at SC and wins big, we wonder at what cost, and if it would be worth it. At this point, indicators are not very favorable.
Interestingly, Kiffin was also part of an SC program that is now under NCAA scrutiny for potentially serious rules violations in the middle part of the decade, and was a walking rules violation at UT, tabbed with no fewer than six mostly minor, but collectively troubling, violations in his short stay at UT. Kiffin, as Al Davis could have probably predicted, reacted arrogantly to the accusations, calling them a "compliment," while Vol players openly spoke of Kiffin and staff "not knowing" the NCAA rulebook. All of which makes Lane a very curious hire by the Trojans. Meanwhile, Kiffin's farewell meeting with his Vol players reportedly nearly turned into a rumble with angered UT players before assistant coach Kippy Brown was narrowly able to avert an ugly scene by diffusing the angry players, some of whom reportedly on the verge of physically attacking Kiffin. UT students protested violently, burning couches and hanging Kiffin in effigy for his rather sudden departure. And no one was left with more egg on his face that the beleaguered AD Mike Hamilton, who went way out on a limb in the first place to hire Kiffin, then sat back and watched all of the uncomfortable fireworks over the past 13 months.
Oh, and on the way out of Knoxville, the controversial Orgeron has also been accused of trying to steer Vol recruits, including a handful that were ready to enroll early this past week in Knoxville to participate in spring football, to instead switch course and follow Kiffin and "Coach O" to Southern Cal, which a couple of UT recruits seem to have done. At last count, the Vol recruiting class has been shaved by seven since Kiffin's quick escape from town, and the Orgeron contacts again have the interest of the NCAA as a possible violation of the "dead (contact) period" with recruits between January 11 and 14.
(It is also worth noting that the Raiders and Al Davis, citing Kiffin's behavior and penchant for rule-breaking at UT and addition to his "fired with cause" reasons at Oakland, have resisted paying Lane the balance of his salary between October and December 2008, money that Kiffin has gone to court in order to seek.)
Lastly, the Kiffin hire included a charade, apparently concocted either by Garrett or SC boosters, that would have brought Chow back into the SC fold to create a "dream team" of assistants with Orgeron, Monte Kiffin, and Chow as the offensive coordinator. That supposed "scoop" was even reported as fact by ESPN. Someone must have forgot to tell Garrett, or the SC boosters that put the Kiffin deal together, that Chow would be unlikely to ever join forces with Kiffin after being pushed aside in favor of young Lane by Carroll five years earlier. Chow, now cross-town at UCLA, rejected the SC overtures, no surprise to anyone who knew what happened five years ago. Except, perhaps, to Garrett and the influential SC money people.
Kiffin, by the way, now says that he will be the play-caller for the Trojan offense. Although a wealth of talent remains on hand, we wouldn't hold our breath waiting for a re-run of 2005 with Reggie Bush, Leinart & Co.
In conclusion, taken together, and considering the NCAA jury the Trojans must face in February after their pain-staking, three-year investigation into the athletic programs, SC's hiring of Kiffin (take that, NCAA!) seems brazen at best, and reckless at worst. Someone with the short and incendiary track record of Kiffin hardly seems the best coaching choice for a program trying to stay out of NCAA jail. Perhaps Kiffin has grown up and will stop making enemies as he has done, in rather remarkable fashion, at his two previous stops, where he has redefined the art of burning bridges in such an incendiary manner than even the former antics of new cross-town rival Rick Neuheisel (now UCLA's coach), who took four years at both Colorado and Washington to generate that sort of animosity, looks almost saintly by comparison. Let's just say that Lane Kiffin and Southern Cal appear to be a perfect match. We'd be remiss, however, if not pointing out that Kiffin's abrupt departure from UT was hardly the first example in the art of sudden abandonment, with examples from Bobby Petrino to Dennis Erickson to Brian Kelly to Nick Saban (and others) all having left early and awkwardly from past assignments. Kiffin is hardly alone in such behavior. But in terms of burning bridges and acting like a spoiled brat and inducing not just dislike, but pure hatred, from not only opponents but supposed comrades as well, Lane Kiffin, circa January 2010, stands pretty much alone. Which, we suggest, should halt any further comparisons to Derek Dooley.
