Lane Kiffin fallout: USC officially fires head football coach

In a Saturday morning interview on ESPN College Gameday, former Southern Cal head coach Lane Kiffin told ESPN’s Chris Fowler that he was to blame for the Trojans’ recent struggles:

Fowler pulled no punches, going so far as to play video of Kessler praising Orgeron’s emotion and love for the team, implying that Kiffin had neither. For his part, Kiffin was unusually straightforward in answering Fowler.

If USC’s new interim head coach Ed Orgeron is only a placeholder, a stopgap measure meant to hold the status quo until the “real” head coach shows up, nobody told Orgeron. Then again, the status quo was “Lane Kiffin,” and who would tell Orgeron to keep that up?

At any rate, USC is already a new-look program off the field thanks to Orgeron imprinting his personality on the team, and as you’d expect from a former defensive lineman who has been given the keys to a program, that starts with food.

Southern Cal got the jump when Lane Kiffin was given his pink slip over the weekend, but it likely will be facing competition in its coaching search from Texas in the coming months.

Already several names have been rumored to be near the top of USC’s list, including Jack Del Rio, Jeff Fisher and Kevin Sumlin. Texas may ponder Charlie Strong, Will Muschamp or Art Briles. But none of those guys figure to be prime tug o’ war candidates.

Avenged Sevenfold. Lane Kiffin was fired in an airport parking lot, and Paul Pasqualoni was probably just dropped off at a local bus station to fend for himself. It is September, and college football is already firing people. That is not what is important right now. What is important is one man, alone in the rain, keeping the demons at bay in the midst of a 55-17 throttling of his team by Stanford.

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” That’s a quote dropped in the lyrics of “Bat Country” by Avenged Sevenfold, referencing Hunter S. Thompson’s reference to a Samuel Johnson’s quote about one solution to life’s agonies. It is also this Washington State fan, stuck in the rain in a hopeless downpour of points and cold water from the heavens, dulling the pain of his existence with popcorn and quite possibly a flask or two of fierce firewater somewhere on his person. He now joins the Pained Red Raider Fan as co-consul ruling all of fandom. He understands what love means: devotion unto unto death or Seattle, whichever comes first.

Recruiting is starting to pick up as conference play starts across the country. More competitive games means more attraction for recruits to visit.

The rest of the Pac-12 has to be pretty disappointed that USC didn’t give Lane Kiffin another chance to turn things around and get a shot at the 2014 season. But the league office has to be very pleased that its most storied and powerful program has elected to make a move to maximize its potential and take the program back to where it was under Pete Carrol.

The end came in three minutes and 58 seconds.

After a thin, banged-up USC squad took the lead, 21-20, on Arizona State early in the third quarter, head coach Lane Kiffin was grinning on the sideline, and things were beginning to look up. The Trojans had survived some first-half adversity and gone 75 yards in two plays, and if Clancy Pendergast’s good-to-date defense could rebound after a tough first 30 minutes, the Trojans could be on their way to a 2013 rebound as well.

Lane Kiffin has gone through more in the past six or seven years than most coaches will go through their entire careers.

He’s been the head coach of three teams, including one professional franchise and arguably the most prestigious college program west of the Mississippi River. Yet despite his rapid rise to the top of the coaching ladder, Kiffin now finds himself an unemployed punchline.

USC athletic director Pat Haden held a press conference Sunday to discuss the school’s firing of Lane Kiffin and introduce Ed Orgeron as the interim head coach.

“It’s never the perfect time, but I thought it was the right time,” Haden said about the decision to part ways with Kiffin. “We weren’t making the progress I thought we should be making. I personally have a great deal of respect for Lane. He did a lot of things well under some very difficult circumstances here.”

Four-star 2015 wide receiver Cordell Broadus, also known as Snoop Dogg’s son, told 247Sports that USC should have fired head coach Lane Kiffin “a while ago”.

Broadus is considered one of the top prospects from California in the 2015 class, and the 247sports composite ranks him as the 53rd-best player in the nation. He currently holds offers from a variety of schools, including USC, UCLA, LSU and Nebraska.

USC defensive line coach Ed Orgeron has been named USC’s interim coach after the firing of head coach Lane Kiffin, according to ESPN’s Joe Schad. Orgeron had a 10-25 record during his time as Ole Miss’ head coach, with most of his other stints focused heavily on recruiting. His promotion likely has to do with holding together the Trojans’ 2014 class.

Kiffin’s removal was announced in the early hours of Sunday morning after the Trojans’ 62-41 loss to Arizona State. He was hired in 2010 after a 7-6 year in Tennessee (his first as a collegiate head coach), and compiled a 28-14 record in three-plus years as USC’s head coach. USC has lost seven of their last 11 games, including five of their last six conference matchups.

Update: Or not?

Four-star outside linebacker Derik Calhoun has decommitted from USC in the wake of the Trojans’ dismissal of head coach Lane Kiffin, according to Rivals ($).

With Lane Kiffin fired, who might USC AD Pat Haden select for one of the sport’s premiere jobs?

Fisher checks all the boxes: He played defensive back at USC, his coaching credentials are excellent, and his demeanor is about as far from Kiffin’s as imaginable. He was pursued by Auburn during its last coaching search. Three weeks ago, when rumors of Kiffin’s demise began swirling, Fisher’s name immediately came up:

That follows multiple dreaded votes of confidence by Haden, a loud “Fire Kiffin” chant during a home loss to Washington State, and even the tailgate tents getting in on the act.

The story of his firing is pretty cold-blooded:

After ridiculous, embarrassing losses in Week 2, many Texas and USC fans want Mack Brown and Lane Kiffin fired.

And now, if they feel strongly that their hopes and dreams will come true, they can actually bet on it, thanks to the sportsbook Bovada.

Demario Richard is a 2014 running back recruit from Palmdale (Calif.), and as a three-star recruit according to the 247Composite, he’s getting a lot of looks from big time programs on the West Coast. Normally, this would be the kind of kid that would love to get an offer and play for USC, but that just doesn’t appear to be the case right now:

It should be noted that USC doesn’t appear to be recruiting Richard, or have even offered him a scholarship. That said, Lane Kiffin’s mere presence at the program is beginning to keep recruits away, and after the Trojans’ 10-7 loss to Washington State on Saturday, the recruits in attendance did not come away with a favorable impression on where things were headed.

Update 2: Marqise Lee himself no longer knows.

Update: No one knows.

The ship seems to be sinking for Lane Kiffin, with fans booing him and even traffic lanes asking for his ousting. (There’s a reason he’s been upgraded to “spicy!” in our hot seat rankings.)

Everything is okay in Los Angeles, however, and Kiffin confirmed the general positive direction by choosing to announce his starter after a QB competition. Not in front of reporters, but rather in front of a lonely mic stand with some USC staffer asking him questions.

We’re just two weeks into the college football season, but two coaches of major programs already find themselves firmly in the hot seat. USC’s Lane Kiffin and Mack Brown of Texas each stand at 1-1 on the year after disappointing Week 2 losses to unranked teams. Rumblings in Southern California and all around Texas suggest the fans are less than happy with their head coaches, and one name has been repeatedly raised as an up-and-coming star to replace them -- Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald has extensive ties to Northwestern, beyond just his current job. He was an All-American linebacker at Northwestern and helped lead them to the 1996 Rose Bowl -- the school’s second-ever bowl appearance. He took over the program as a head coach in 2006 after serving as the linebackers coach for five years and has led the Wildcats to five consecutive bowl appearances with a win in last year’s Gator Bowl serving as the team’s first bowl win since 1949 (and their second ever). Fitzgerald is already Northwestern’s all-time winningest coach, with 50 victories at the helm of the program, and is one of only three coaches to lead the Wildcats to three consecutive winning seasons.

USC fans are ready to be done with Lane Kiffin. That much became clear this weekend. While searching for other ways to express distaste, some spray-paint-wielding Trojan found an anti-Kiffin message already two-thirds written for them:

Great find by Lakers announcer John Ireland. You can be certain Coach Kiffin won’t be naming any children “Hose”, “Escape”, or “Truck” after this.

It was just a week ago that we said the early season Hot Seat Watch was merely an experiment, an exercise in prediction based on limited information. After all, UConn wasn’t going to fire Paul Pasqualoni after one loss, no matter how bad that loss was.

Things stopped being experimental in Week 2. Things got real.

It’s going to be an amazing year in Southern California.

With Pac-12 Media Day on Friday, USC athletic director Pat Haden answered the question he knows will be on everybody’s minds before anybody could ask it: Lane Kiffin is not on the hot seat.

Haden appears in a video released Thursday night by USC Athletics on YouTube, starting out by discussing the school’s plans to renovate the LA Coliseum, and praising the team’s running back depth and the coaching staff’s ability to work with inexperienced quarterbacks.

Lane Kiffin’s got everything figured out if he gets fired at USC: he’s going into high school coaching, which well, yeah, sure.

Kiffin took a few moments to wonder if maybe his steep -- and drama-loaded -- rise to being head coach of USC maybe cost him some of his love of the game, per Ralph D. Russo of the AP:

You know who likes to gossip? Football coaches and administrators, that’s who. They’re as gabby as a sewing circle but not nearly as polite, and you don’t get a quilt for your guest bedroom when they’re done.

Potential coaching job openings dominate the chatter, and coaches and athletic directors all like to gab about one or two top jobs that might “pop” and start a butterfly effect. One firing at a top gig causes ripples across the entire sport. Ostensibly, you couldn’t get that linebackers coach gig at Delaware if that recent BCS powerhouse didn’t clean house four weeks prior. That’s why everyone talks about the jobs at the top.