We’re all well aware that Lane Kiffin has amassed a laundry list of questionable decisions during his time as a college head coach. Surprisingly, the number of poor choices he’s made have all managed to occur in just three years, since his one season at the helm for the Tennessee Volunteers in 2009 (poor choice number one: leaving Tennessee the way he did). Most coaches put together this kind of list over the course of an entire career, which I suppose is the possibility Kiffin is facing if he doesn’t start making a concerted, visible effort to clean up the goings-on that seem to follow him everywhere.
Where to start…well, I guess we’ll begin with what just came to light out of the newly postseason-eligible USC Trojans. During their November 3 game against the high-octane Oregon Ducks, a USC student-manager was caught partially deflating the footballs that USC was going to be using on offense. Obviously an illegal move, right?
Regulation footballs are inflated to between 12 1/2 and 13 1/2 pounds of pressure per square inch. Anyone who has held a properly inflated football can attest to the fact that there’s very little give to it when one squeezes it. In the PAC-12, each team is allotted six footballs they will use on offense, and (in this case) USC’s six are different from Oregon’s six. Watching the refs constantly replace footballs during a game makes more sense now, right? Anyway, once the balls are properly inflated, the officials check them and then retain possession of them until the start of the game.
At that point, it would seem, a student manager from each team is put in charge of corralling these footballs during the course of the game. Apparently, the USC student manager was on the Oregon sideline during the game (the side where the chains were located), and someone from the Ducks program saw him deflating several of the balls. Once the officials were told, they took the footballs back to the locker room for testing and discovered that all but one of them had been deflated to some degree.
Now, I know that deflating the footballs feels like it’s wrong even if a person didn’t know what kind of edge it would give a team, and yes it’s obviously against the rules. But why? Remove any of the air from a football, and it becomes a little more pliable and therefore easier to catch and throw. If, as a pass-first, pass-heavy offense, you’re going to seek out an unfair advantage, this particular method seems like a viable choice.
Here are the issues surrounding this ridiculousness (other than the obvious rule-breaking):
- USC’s one-two punch of Matt Barkley and Marqise Lee is pretty successful on their own. Is there anyone in NCAA football who thinks these two need any extra help at all? Didn’t think so. (I, on the other hand, can’t throw a spiral with anything larger than a junior-sized football because my hands are too small. I’ll have to remember to partially deflate the regulation-sized one next time my husband and I play catch…)
- Lane Kiffin doesn’t exactly have a squeaky clean image that lends itself to the rest of us trusting him. He claims that the “rogue manager” acted alone, and the coaching staff and players had no knowledge of or role in the student’s choice to cheat. Once a person realizes everything Kiffin has done, been accused of, or found himself tied to (listed below of course), it’s a little hard to give him the benefit of doubt.
- Really, kid? You seemingly make the decision, of your own accord, to cheat in an attempt to help your team beat one of the top programs in the nation, and then you do so in clear view of the opposing team? How many times have we said, if you’re going to break the rules, at least do it in a way that’s going to give you the lowest chance of getting caught. Deflating a football or five on the opposing team’s sideline does not fall under “on the downlow” in anyone’s dictionary, dude.
Both USC and the PAC-12 investigated the matter, or if you read the Yahoo! article, they held an inquisition. No word yet on whether or not it was a Mel Brooks-designed comic song-and-dance number, but it did result in the student being fired and the program being fined $25,000.
So how does Lane Kiffin get the Dumbass of the Week Award and the unnamed student manager only gets honorable mention? Well, it’s hard to believe that a student would choose to put the reputation (or even the season, depending on the mood of the conference and/or NCAA) of an entire college football program at risk by cheating in a way that’s nowhere near a guaranteed payoff against an offense like Oregon’s, and that his choice was made with no influence from the program itself. The USC Trojans are just off a postseason ban from the NCAA as punishment for the improperly benefitted Reggie Bush, had a shot at some serious postseason potential, and were voted the top program in the USA Today preseason poll. Maybe that’s a good place to start enumerating why Lane Kiffin’s weaksauce “I wasn’t involved” statement doesn’t deserve our trust, but most certainly deserves this week’s Dumbass Award.
- While still coaching at Tennessee, Kiffin accused Urban Meyer of recruiting violations. During a Tennessee booster breakfast, Kiffin told those attending that Meyer had broken an NCAA rule by calling highly touted recruit Nu’Keese Richardson while Richardson had been visiting Tennessee’s campus prior to signing a letter of intent with the Vols. He went so far as to say, “I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn’t get him.” Problem? Meyer calling Richardson wasn’t a violation. Kiffin publicly calling out Meyer and making that accusation was. The SEC reprimanded Kiffin, required him to apologize, and then made a statement saying they expect all their coaches to be aware of both conference and NCAA rules. How is it reasonable to expect a head football coach would understand the rules governing his position? They’re far too busy for something like that. Oops.
- At the start of this season, when USA Today began hyping up their preseason poll for football, Lane Kiffin went on record saying he wouldn’t vote USC number 1 when informed that Arizona’s Rich-Rod did. Problem? When the national newspaper went through their votes and realized Kiffin had indeed done what he said he wouldn’t, they outed him, abandoning their practice of keeping the votes confidential until the season’s final poll. Their reasoning was that Kiffin’s false statement needed to be shown as such to protect the integrity of the poll. Either way, the revelation of Kiffin’s vote forced the coach to back pedal (again) and attempt to reason away his statement. Apparently, he was speaking from the point of view of an opposing coach. How did we miss that? We must have all been blind to the implied flashing neon sign in his quote that said he wasn’t actually speaking of his own vote. Oops.
- USC started this season off at home against the University of Hawaii, coached by former USC assistant coach Norm Chow. Prior to that game, Kiffin announced that the LA Coliseum would no longer be available to visiting teams the night before a game for walk-throughs. He claimed that it was to preserve the playing surface and that many programs don’t allow walk-throughs. He added that USC never does walk-throughs before away games to avoid burning up players’ energy. What he didn’t say was that USC only stopped doing walk-throughs when he took over after Pete Carroll jumped to the NFL. He also refused to say which other programs disallow visiting teams into the stadium the day before a game. Problem? It turns out most programs allow walk-throughs. It would appear Kiffin remembered the lesson from number one on this list: don’t publicly name names. It’s a slow learning curve, but it’s there. Unfortunately, closing the Coliseum now just looks like a personal slap in the face to a much-loved former staff member. Oops.
- In their October 20 game against Colorado, USC switched the number of their back-up quarterback, Cody Kessler (normally #6), to #35 (the number normally worn by the team’s punter, Kyle Negrete). Following a touchdown in the first quarter, USC opted to go for 2 rather than kick the extra point. They trotted out the team, including the number 35-wearing Kessler, to run the conversion and succeeded in having Kessler score it himself though it was called back on offensive holding. Problem? The number Kessler was wearing in the second half: 6. The NCAA rules clearly state that a team may not switch a player’s number during a game to deceive an opponent. Kiffin said that because the original switch from 6 to 35 took place before the game (legal as long as it’s reported prior to the game), it wasn’t against the rules. Sure, that one was legit. What about the one that did happen during the game? When you put a player on the field during a typical kicking situation wearing the punter’s number, it stands to reason that an opposing team assumes he’s out there to hold the ball for the kicker. Instead, it turns out to be a back-up quarterback who, save for a penalty, ran the ball in for 2 points. That player is then on the sidelines in the second half wearing his usual number? Doesn’t seem sketchy at all, right? Apparently the PAC-12 is handling this issue internally, and nothing else has been said as of yet. Oops.
How much longer does Kiffin have before either USC or the PAC-12 hands down a serious punishment? Maybe we can assume that the student-manager acted alone. Maybe Kiffin had planned to close the Coliseum to visiting teams no matter who their first opponent was. It’s possible, I suppose, that the in-game jersey switcheroo happened without Kiffin’s knowledge (I mean, how often do you actually pay attention to a back-up QB? No, Tim Tebow doesn’t count. He’s the Jets RB/non-blocking FB/fake-punt-visible-from-a-mile-away go-to guy. He’s so much more than a simple back-up QB).
If we’re honest, though, his logic behind no longer allowing walk-throughs seems weak at best: protecting the playing surface? What is an opposing team going to do to it that they won’t also have to deal with the following day? And when the jersey issue came up, he didn’t deny knowledge of it. He tried to say it wasn’t against the rules (the “being aware of NCAA rules” thing hasn’t quite stuck yet I guess). And anyway, no matter what Kiffin’s role was in any of these situations, they all happened on his watch. At some point, his ridiculous “Aw, shucks, I didn’t know any better” apologies aren’t going to mean anything anymore. Like I said earlier, unless Kiffin starts taking some huge steps to batten down the hatches of his program, he’s going to find himself out of a job and blacklisted.
Come on, Lane. Remember that whatever goes on in your program is reflective of its leadership. Congrats, Idiot.
The Poor Sports 