LOS ANGELES - Southern California fired Lane Kiffin early Sunday morning, ending the coach’s tumultuous tenure a few hours after the Trojans lost 62-41 at Arizona State.
Ed Orgeron was picked as USC’s interim head coach by Athletic Director Pat Haden, who dismissed Kiffin at Los Angeles International Airport following the Trojans’ flight home. USC (3-2, 0-2 Pac-12) has eight games left under Orgeron, Kiffin’s assistant head coach and the former Mississippi head coach.
“It’s never the perfect time to do these things, but I thought it was the right time,” Haden said.
Haden fired Kiffin in an early morning meeting at the Trojans’ private airport terminal, but not before a 45-minute chat in which Kiffin tried to change Haden’s mind.
Haden didn’t hire Kiffin, but had been firmly behind the coach until Saturday, when the Trojans matched the most points allowed in school history. The loss was the seventh in 11 games for a high-profile program still struggling under the cumulative effect of NCAA sanctions.
“He did a lot of things well under some very difficult circumstances here,” Haden said. “No one could have worked harder. He did a lot of the things we asked. Graduated players, never had compliance issues … and he really worked under some very difficult NCAA sanctions, there’s no doubt about it.”
USC must finish an already disappointing season without Kiffin while looking for another coach to reboot its proud program. The Trojans are off this week before returning Oct. 10 at the Coliseum against Arizona.
Kiffin went 28-15 in parts of four seasons in his self-described dream job, but USC is 0-2 in conference play for the first time since 2001 after losses to Arizona State and Washington State - and the record only partly captures the discontent of USC’s fans and alumni.
The Trojans were unimpressive on offense even in their three victories this season, stoking discontent around a school with sky-high expectations despite the tail end of heavy NCAA penalties stemming from coach Pete Carroll’s tenure.
Kiffin received withering criticism for persisting in calling the Trojans’ offensive plays himself well into the school’s second consecutive poor offensive season. The Trojans lost their home opener 10-7 to the unheralded Washington State earlier this month, and Coliseum fans serenaded USC repeatedly with chants of “Fire Kiffin!”
USC has been in a slow tailspin since going 10-2 and beating Oregon in 2011, the last year of its bowl ban. The Trojans started last season as the preseason No. 1, but the Trojans finished 7-6 and out of the rankings, followed by this season’s disappointments.
“I think it could easily be asked, ‘Why not last year after the 7-6 season?’” Haden said. “‘What do you know now that you didn’t know after a 7-6 season?’ The rationale was the prior year, Lane had won 10 games. We thought, and (were) hoping that last year was an aberration. We felt we could rebound, make some changes, and indeed, Lane did. … But at the end of the day, we just weren’t making the progress I felt we needed to make.”
The firing comes less than five months after Haden said Kiffin had “been as good as he can be” in the face of USC’s sanctions. Before this season began, Haden said he was “100 percent” behind the embattled Kiffin.
“We support our coaches 100 percent until they’re no longer our coaches,” Haden said. “Why would you support a coach 85 percent?”
Orgeron, 52, went 10-25 in three seasons at Ole Miss, but that failed tenure did little to diminish his stature as a bulldog recruiter and defensive line coach. He coached alongside Kiffin at Tennessee before following his friend back to USC.
Orgeron, a Louisiana native with a thick Cajun accent, might sound a bit out of place in Los Angeles, but he’s a popular assistant coach and a USC devotee after 11 years over two tenures at the school.
“It’s an unfortunate day today that a coach got let go, but we understand the circumstances,” Orgeron said. “I want to tell you we’re here as a staff to answer the bell. We’re all accountable for what happened as a staff and as players. Us Trojans know how to do it.”
Orgeron said Clay Helton will be his offensive coordinator and the Trojans’ play-caller. Helton, USC’s quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator, has been with the Trojans since Kiffin returned in 2010.
Most players found out about Kiffin’s dismissal by text messages in the middle of the night. The players have the next two days off before returning to practice Wednesday.
Kiffin’s USC exit was abrupt, just like his departures from two previous head-coaching positions.
Kiffin, 38, went from being a college offensive coordinator to NFL head coach at age 31, a head coach in the SEC Conference at 33 and USC’s head coach at 34. If there was a consistent trend to those stops with the Oakland Raiders, Tennessee and the Trojans, it was turmoil.
He lasted only 20 games before his departure boiled into a public feud with Al Davis, the late Raiders owner. He then infuriated Volunteers fans when he left after 14 months, less than a month before national signing date, to head back to the Trojans.
Former USC athletic director Mike Garrett hired Kiffin away from Tennessee to replace Seattle Seahawks coach Carroll, the architect of USC’s dynasty over the previous decade. Kiffin was an assistant under Carroll, eventually running the Trojans’ offense alongside Steve Sarkisian, now Washington’s coach.
But Kiffin took over at USC shortly after it had been hit with the heaviest sanctions leveled against a program in a quarter-century, including a two-year bowl ban and the loss of 30 scholarships overthree years. Kiffin had nothing to do with the misdeeds committed under Carroll and Garrett, who was swiftly dismissed and replaced by Haden.
Expectations at USC did not drop even though the Trojans were playing with nearly 30 fewer scholarship players than another major-college teams- especially last season, when the Trojans started out ranked No. 1 in the country with quarterback Matt Barkley and star receivers Robert Woods and Marqise Lee.
USC ended the season as the first team in nearly 25 yeasrs to open No. 1 and finish unranked. USC lost five of its last six games, including the Sun Bowl, and Kiffin parted ways with his father, defensive guru Monte Kiffin, who is now defensive coordinator with the Dallas Cowboys.
The scholarship restrictions gradually eroded the Trojans’ depth, and last season’s struggles clearly hurt the vaunted recruiting power of Kiffin and Orgeron. Between the sanctions and injuries, the Trojans played at Arizona State on Saturday night with 56 recruited scholarship players, well below its limit of 75 and the standard 85.
Kiffin didn’t help his navigation of the Trojans’ troubles with his standoffish personality and several strange ethical decisions.
USC was reprimanded by the Pac-12 for under inflating footballs before a loss to Oregon last season, and he also was criticized for switching jersey numbers on players in an attempt to deceive the Trojans’ opponents.
Kiffin even closed USC’s practices to the public after years of transparency under Carroll, who embraced USC’s tradition of raucous open workouts. The Trojans cited NCAA compliance as the reason for the decision, but it didn’t sit well with fans and alumni. This season, Kiffin also closed his practices to the media.
Kiffin waffled over his choice of a starting quarterback, waiting until the third game to select Cody Kessler over Max Wittek, and the offense has sluggish before a season-opening victory at Hawaii.
But Kiffin was finally undone by the defense, which had been solid under new coordinator Clancy Pendergast until Arizona State piled up 612 yards.
USC’s next game is in 11 days, giving the Trojans time to regroup and heal. USC hasn’t announced the severity of a left knee injury for Lee, the Biletnikoff Award winner last year. He is expected to have his knee evaluated later Sunday in Los Angeles.
“It didn’t sound very good or look very good,” Kiffin said after Saturday’s game.
Hours later, Lee’s health became just one of the huge problems facing USC’s storied program.
Sports, Pages 13 on 09/30/2013