Lane Kiffen Has To Be Greatest Salesmen In Football

History To Get $4 Million A Year To Take Over At USC

Kiffen's Has No History of Success and His Only Claim

To Fame Is Being Considered To Be A Classless Punk

By Kelso Sturgeon

What were the people at Southern California thinking when they hired a new coach with little experience and no record of success and gave him an annual salary of just over $4 million? They must have seen something others missed. Had they interviewed his peers they would have been told Lane Kiffen was in fact little more an immature big-mouthed classless punk.

I knew Cassius Clay quite well before he became Muhammad Ali and used to laugh with him as he made bizarre predictions of what he was going to do to his next opponent. I never considered it braggadocio because I knew he could back it up with his fists. For him I had nothing but respect.

It also is quite difficult for me to feel any degree of warmth for Alabama football coach Nick Saban, since I have seen this egotistical control freak and certifiable jerk in action. He is not some warm and fuzzy guy one can like but he certainly has my respect for his genius to produce winners on the football field. Two national championships-one at LSU and one at Alabama -in the past decade says it all.

Winners come in all sizes and shapes. Some are likeable and some insufferable bores, some humble, some arrogant. They all share one thing in common-they win.

With Kiffen we get a punk with diarrhea of the mouth and with few wins to back it up. The 35-year-old former back-up quarterback at Fresno State left USC, where he was offensive coordinator, to become head coach of the Oakland Raiders, a position at which he lasted five games into his second season before being fired.

Mark him down at 5-15 as a head coach in the NFL.

It was on to Tennessee , where he went 7-6 in one season before splitting in the middle of the night to take over from his former boss Pete Carroll. There was nothing spectacular about the year in Knoxville , where he was waxed by Florida , Auburn , Alabama and Ole Miss before getting buried by Virginia Tech in 37-14 in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl.

One might say no one can win with the Oakland Raiders as long as a somewhat deranged Al Davis remains in charge but the truth is, geniuses win, period, no questions asked. Geniuses overcome everything and win.

It is safe to say Kiffen was more successful at Tennessee than he was at Oakland because of one of his assistants, his father, Monte Kiffen, joined him as the highest paid assistant in college football at a salary of $1 million. The 70-year-old father is one of the defensive geniuses of all time and was the mastermind behind Tampa Bay 's Super Bowl championship.

The father moves onto USC at a salary of $2 million, and he deserves it as the brains behind the operation. In other words, the wrong Kiffen is in charge.

How Kiffen Stacks Up Against Best

There is nothing that puts the ridiculous salary the younger Kiffen is being paid in perspective than to compare with the 10 highest paid coaches in college football, and their accomplishments. These are the latest figures available and the salaries are listed in millions.

It is obvious someone at USC saw a lot of potential in Kiffen. The rest of it just missed it.

23 New College Coaches This Season

While the jury remains out on Kiffen, he is just one of 23 coaches taking over major programs for the 2010 season and we will at a later date address each one of them. Some will be major improvements, some suspect in their value and some simply impossible to understand.

On the positive side, Notre Dame fans, who have seen four head coaches in the past 10 seasons, will get a major upgrade with the hiring of former Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly. The latter is the real deal and is the perfect fit for the Irish. He is a genius and will win from the get go.

One can also expect positive results from the hiring by Louisville of Florida defensive coordinator Charlie Strong-a major improvement over Steve Kragthorpe who lost control of the program from his first day on campus and was never able to duplicate the success he had a Tulsa . Ditto for John Holliday at Marshall and Bobby Hauck at UNLV.

At first glance the biggest downgrade looks to be headed to Memphis where Larry Porter, who has never been a head coach, takes over for the veteran Tommy West. West never got the respect he was due but he did an amazing job of keeping the Tigers competitive while battle with the likes of Ole Miss, Tennessee , Auburn , Mississippi State and Alabama in recruiting.

As noted earlier, more later.

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