Posted on 12/02/2013 3:30:23 PM PST by Hotlanta Mike
USC athletic director Pat Haden had two months to decide on the best possible candidate to replace disastrous coach Lane Kiffin. Should it concern Trojans fans that the guy he chose, Washington's Steve Sarkisian, has a lower career Pac-12 winning percentage (.539) than the guy Haden fired (.586)?
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Kiffin took over a program just a year removed from a streak of seven straight BCS bowl seasons, albeit one that would soon be hit with crippling NCAA sanctions. Sarkisian, Kiffin's close friend and former co-offensive coordinator under Pete Carroll (aw-kward), inherited a Washington program that had just gone 0-12.
But that was five years ago. While no one would question Sarkisian had it much tougher rebuilding the Huskies than Kiffin did reloading the Trojans, Sarkisian's landmark achievement this season was that he finally won eight games at a major West Coast university with sparkling new facilities and a 1991 national championship trophy on its mantle. With that as his pedigree, Sarkisian now moves to a program where eight-win seasons are cause for termination and national championships are an expectation, not a fleeting moment in history.
(Excerpt) Read more at sportsillustrated.cnn.com ...
Meh, I think Haden is GREAT!!! And needs to keep up the excellent management of the Trojan athletic dept.....
GO BRUINS!!!
(The only good trojan is a used trojan.....)
Jeremy Foley makes Haden look like a genius.
Good to see all the Leach fans on here. My wife is a Tennessee and I’m an Arkansas fan and we were both hoping one of them would hire Leach.
I’m also a Baylor fan (Alumni) and I’m afraid Texas is going to try to get Briles.
“Do you have any idea how much $$ the program brings to USC? We are not talking peanuts.”
Exactly, and while they never get much above number 20 in the top 25 football earning schools, that’s still about $30 million/year just for football. And that’s even in the Lane Kiffin years. Any USC President who suggested getting rid of football wouldn’t be President for long.
As to Steve Sarkisian, he didn’t exactly turn the Washington team around in five years.
Sometimes being politically correct will save you from a death penalty.
Actually, no. Petersen and Franklin turned them down, and Sumlin essentially did the same by re-upping with A&M. There were rumors about Del Rio and Gruden, but Del Rio has never coached in college and Gruden has no interest in ever coaching again. I think it came down to the UCLA game - if Orgeron won, he got the job, and if not they'd bring in somebody else.
Given that choice, I think they should have kept Orgeron as the head coach, but I don't know that Sarkisian is a bad alternative, especially if Orgeron stays on staff.
He's going to fail. I get the feeling that they are merely using him until they get a big name coach after the sanctions are done in a year or two. Kiffin was intolerable and they had to dump him right away. I give Sark 4 years at most.
“I don’t know that Sarkisian is a bad alternative, especially if Orgeron stays on staff.”
But that’s the big question, does he stay? Orgeron is bound to get inquiries from other schools and now that he’s been a head coach (even if temporarily)does he want to move up? And does Sarkisian really want him around?
Actually, after I posted, I saw that Orgeron resigned tonight. I can’t say I’m that surprised and I think he’ll line up something pretty quickly, if he hasn’t already.
He’d already been a head coach at Ole Miss, although not with a lot of success. He’s known as a good recruiter and my guess is he’ll probably be picked up by either a mid-major team as head coach or a premier program that’s looking for a new DC.
WSU is off the bottom. So far, he isn’t the return of Mike Price (wow, was that a weird time in WSU history), but they like him there. He fits in perfectly in Pullman.
UW was 0-12 when Sark took over. He built it to 8 wins this year for the first time. I think he ‘peter principled’ a little here - didn’t have what it took to coach a team back to elite status.
At USC, he did a phenomenal job at OC, and learned recruiting from the best.
Jim Mora wanted the UW job when it came open, but was Seahawks coach. He loves the area.
We’ll see.
” he might not leave UCLA”
Looks like he is staying at UCLA.
Huskies get Chris Peterson. I think they’re feeling pretty good right now.
Boomer Sooner!!!!! Now Go Baylor!
Boomer Sooner!!!!! Now Go Baylor!
So the West Virginia loss was not an aberration...
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