USC's Lane Kiffin To Revolutionize College Football?

He may not be considered a revolutionary, but Lane Kiffin has stirred up a revolt wherever he has been a head coach.

In Oakland, he took the Frank Sinatra path and tried to do things “His Way.”  That revolt against the established commissar of the Raiders, Al Davis, lasted all of a season and one-quarter. 

After Kiffin tried to stage a coup to overthrow his defensive coordinator, Rob Ryan, Davis squashed the revolt and ousted his young head coach instead in a fiery press conference unequaled for sheer angst.

Then Kiffin went to Tennessee and tried to stage another revolt against the dominant rulers of the SEC, Urban Meyer and Nick Saban.  Instead it was Kiffin who suffered the embarrassment of being guilty of the same offenses that he had erroneously alleged of Meyer and Saban, namely recruiting violations.

But now a year later, with those former revolts behind him, Kiffin finds himself in a very revolting situation, one not of his doing.

In early June, the NCAA turned Kiffin’s dream job as head football coach at USC into a nightmare when it handicapped the program with severe sanctions. 

None of the sanctions were any fault of Kiffin’s, but rather were due to former player, Reggie Bush, and the oversights of previous head coach Pete Carroll and former athletic director Mike Garrett.

But it is Kiffin, his staff, and his players who must unjustly pay for those offenses.

First Kiffin found that the previous staff had under-recruited, which was fine under normal circumstances.  But the present sanctions are anything but normal.

They allowed scholarship upperclassmen to transfer without penalty from an already reduced roster that left less than 70 scholarship players.  The NCAA’s two-year ban on bowl appearances caused two recruits, the nation’s overall No. 1 recruit, Seantrel Henderson, and junior college transfer Glen Stanley, to ask for their release.

Then as the Trojans began Fall Camp, a rash of injuries reduced the number of available scholarship players to the mid-50s.

There is the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention.  One might add that it is also the mother of revolutionary ideas.

Kiffin was intelligent enough to realize that he could not conduct practices in the usual way under the circumstances.  So, he instituted a series of policies that might revolutionize the way college and high school teams practice from now on.

To cut down on injuries, he reduced the number of two-a-day practices by replacing several morning practices with extra conditioning workouts in the weight room. 

Instead of the usual four or five weight room workouts during Fall Camp, the Trojans went through 17.  Kiffin also added additional position meetings so that the players were mentally focused on their assignments.

He also moved some of the afternoon workouts into the evening when it was cooler.  Last but not least, he took the bold step of eliminating tackling from those workouts.   

How coaches from around the country view what Kiffin has done will depend on how well the Trojans do this season.

While I am an enthusiastic supporter of what Coach Kiffin has done so far at USC in all aspects including training, discipline and academics, I am not about to crown the Trojans, the 2010 Associated Press National Champions.

I realize that they are ranked 14th in the preseason, and many have picked them to win eleven or more games.  However, my expectations, considering the Trojans’ current depth problems, would be for an eight or nine win season.

Nevertheless, should USC win 11, 12, or even 13 games, such a huge success will be the result of the revolutionary way Lane Kiffin has approached the difficulties that were foisted upon his staff and their program.

Many of us, when we face a mountain of obstacles, have a tendency to curse the darkness instead of lighting a candle.  In Lane Kiffin’s case, say what you will about him, but I believe he has turned on the floodlights to the problems at USC both on and off the field.

In the long run, no matter what their record, the Trojans will be better off for how Kiffin has revolutionized the football program.