2013 College Football Coaching Carousel thread...

Eh, maybe Nebraska and Florida. I think a lot of these schools sort of know their place in the sporting world. Not everyone is going to be Ohio State or Alabama. It's probably not worth spending tens of millions of dollars to chase a real longshot, no matter who you hire.

 

I think Haden had to quietly play both sides here. Sure he wants USC to do well but, with the Stanford win, he was in a pickle. At least UCLA's win - a dominant win at that - made this decision much easier with not as much public outcry if USC would have won on Saturday.

Haden probably determined that Kiffin was poison and October/November would have been Dead Coach Walking, which blends into negative recruiting.

 

So if they beat UCLA, does it change anything? I can't imagine it all going down in less than 48 hours.

I can understand firing Kiffin, because that wasn't a knee-jerk reaction to one game. It had been building for a while. No, Haden didn't handle that the best way. You don't meet with someone when they get off the airplane after a disappointing game and tell them they're fired on the spot.

But in regards to hiring Sarkisian, I've got to think the decision was made prior to Saturday. So I wonder if they just strung Orgeron along and didn't tell him anything? Or if was ever really a candidate to begin with? Seems like he did about as much as anyone could hope for.

 

UCLA shit housing USC was Haden's out card.
Guessing that he was all in on Sark pretty soon after Gruden said thanks but no thanks, and although I think he would have been a great fit, never could get excited about Sumlin.

 

When is a good time to fire someone?

 

Sarkisian picked a good day to bolt. Figure the Seahawks losing would cause more of a stink tomorrow. And with the apparent win, he won't get torched hardly at all. UW will be fine. Sarkisian won't be too tough an act to follow and he set the program up quite well in the last few years for sustainable success.

 

Ideally, after the season ends. Never been a big fan of the interim coach thing.

But, if you must fire someone mid-season, you can do it the next day or Monday. Not at 3 AM when the guy is probably exhausted and emotionally drained after a disappointing loss.

 

Agreed. He took over a program that was at rock-bottom and got them back to being respectable. His name was mentioned for the USC job as early as last year. Probably has more to do with his previous ties to USC than being the "best coach available", however that gets determined. I figure both parties will do fine.

 

Didn't he appear on '60 Minutes' while he was still on the Patriots' staff, preemptively threatening fat discrimination lawsuits because he hadn't been hired for an HC job at the time??

 

Newspapers layoff people all the time. The Oregonian laid a guy off who was in Omaha covering the CWS by phone. And I'm sure the increased walkup sales the last couple of months at the Coliseum helped soothe any angst Haden may have had over leaving Kiffin on the tarmac. And I'm also sure that SC's recent success showed that there was a lot more wrong with the program than just the numbers coming up short on the scoreboard.

 

My best friend's dad is an associate AD at Wake and I was blindsided by this.

 

Actually, that 6-2 finish enabled USC to go 9-4, with a win over Stanford, about 40-50K more in total at their remaining home games, and a decent bowl trip to San Francisco or Vegas. In any world that's considerably better than the 3-10 or 4-9 Cleveland Steamer they would have accomplished under Kiffin, since it was obvious the team had quit on him.

They got far more bang for the bucks they paid Kiffin NOT to coach than they did for the money they paid him to be their coach.