Lane Kiffin finally fired by USC

The USC Trojans have finally made their move, as Athletic Director Pat Haden announced the firing of maligned head football coach Lane Kiffin this morning. According to USC Athletics’ official site, Haden informed Kiffin of his decision during their travel back from Tempe to Los Angeles after dropping a 62-41 result to the now 3-1 Arizona State Sun Devils.

The decision to fire Lane Kiffin was a long time coming, and the loss to a conference opponent was the last straw for Haden and USC. Kiffin had all the tools to be a championship contender last season, and USC instead fell flat and lost several key games. This season, the Trojans are 3-2, and it’s been more negative results, disappointment, and just bad coaching from Kiffin.

Although Kiffin has a way of attracting recruits, that attraction was just superficial glitz. Once the surface was peeled, recruits started to realize that Kiffin is just a sham of a head coach, because there’s no point in being convinced to attend a school whose head coach, frankly, stinks at coaching. There has been more than one recruit who has stated that they would consider committing to USC football if Kiffin were to leave, and one such player is talented four-star running back Demario Richard, who is a premier target for several Pac-12 schools.

USC has lost seven of their past 11 games, and the downward spiral in on-field results and recruiting was enough for Haden to finally pull the plug. In my opinion, the only reason why Lane Kiffin wasn’t fired this offseason is because Haden didn’t want to look bad after giving Kiffin a vote of confidence; that’s all, thankfully, out of the way now. Haden finally had enough, and it’s time for USC to move forward.

The official athletics site notes that Lane Kiffin is 28-15 with USC in his career, which is a downright awful record for a program of USC’s prestige with their resources and talent. Now, let’s just hope that USC fans won’t have to see all-time leading receiver Marqise Lee miss significant playing time after he suffered an injury yesterday.