Steve Sarkisian replaces Lane Kiffin again, this time as Alabama offensive coordinator

Alabama will hire former USC and Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian as its offensive coordinator, the Crimson Tide announced Friday evening.

It’s a promotion. At the start of the season, Nick Saban hired Sarkisian to be an offensive analyst on Alabama’s massive support staff. When that move was announced, it seemed natural that Sarkisian would be a candidate to replace Tide offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin whenever Kiffin moved on. Kiffin is now the head coach at Florida Atlantic, and though he’ll stay with Alabama through its College Football Playoff run, Sarkisian should replace him immediately thereafter.

Sarkisian arrived at USC as a quarterbacks coach for the 2001 season. With the exception of a 2004 season spent with the Oakland Raiders, Sarkisian worked at USC under Pete Carroll through 2008, later as a coordinator and assistant head coach. He left for the Washington head job in 2009 and went 34-29 in five seasons in Seattle.

The coaching world’s a small one. After Carroll left USC in 2010 to coach the Seattle Seahawks, the Trojans hired Kiffin to replace him. When Kiffin was fired midseason in 2013, current LSU coach Ed Orgeron finished out the year as the interim. Despite Orgeron finishing the year strong, Pat Haden, then USC’s athletic director, hired Sarkisian, an old Carroll assistant, to take Kiffin’s permanent place.

It didn’t go well. Sarkisian went 9-4 in 2014, his first year, but was fired after a 3-2 start in 2015. He was to take a leave of absence, but USC dismissed him shortly after that, and Sarkisian checked into rehab to seek treatment for alcoholism. He later filed a lawsuit accusing USC of not accommodating his alcoholism as a disability, and the suit went to arbitration.

USC didn’t have a choice but to fire Sarkisian. If a school’s worried that a coach has an alcohol problem, it can’t have that coach lead a team of dozens of young men in a physical sport that can result in horrible injury. But the whole thing was nonetheless terrible, as Rodger Sherman summed up:

Firing Sarkisian was borderline inhumane.

For a year and a half, USC had tolerated — and in many ways allowed — Sarkisian’s problem. Then, in 48 hours, it decided the problem was so large that it needed to fire him at the moment he most needed help. ...

USC could’ve continued to employ Sarkisian as head coach, hiding what it knew about his problem. As repugnant as I find firing Sarkisian, this is somehow worse. Sarkisian frequently showed up drunk to work. Drunk people often fail to make rational decisions. Sarkisian’s job involves sending young men to play a dangerous sport. For the safety of its players and the only bodies and brains they will ever have, USC had an obligation to remove Sarkisian from active duty.

Sarkisian had to go. It was a horribly sad situation. But the way it ended at USC never meant Sarkisian was a bad guy. It never meant he couldn’t coach. And Sarkisian is just 42 years old — he could have a lot of good years of coaching left in him.

Since Sarkisian got to Tuscaloosa in the fall, nothing negative has come out publicly about his behavior or his condition. Alcoholism is a deeply personal battle, and it’s not our business how Sarkisian has dealt with it in the last year.

What we can all hope is that Sarkisian is healthy, happy, and ready to do again what he was once so good at. To that end, this is a good sign.