Fight On for old SC, Fight On to Victory!

[TripletDaddy]

Mr. Henderson has said that his son will sign with USC this week. Good news for the Trojans.

Local spec is that his holdout had less to do with SanCtions and more to do with his academic eligibility.

Turns out some of these student athletes are more athlete than student.

[Hot Lunch]

Turns out some of these student athletes are more athlete than student.

You don't say. From my experience, I would have never thought that.

[il Padrino Ute]

Turns out some of these student athletes are more athlete than student.

The hell you say.

Edit: I'm a hack. HL beat me to it.

[TripletDaddy]

Mr. Henderson has said that his son will sign with USC this week. Good news for the Trojans.

Done deal.

Yawn-trel finally faxes in his LOI.

Also, thanks to Alabama's vacated wins, SC now stands alone as the college program with the most bowl wins of all time: 32. Alabama falls to 31.

Good day for the Trojans.

[Coach McGuirk]

Article on The Father, Monte.

http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/ncf/news/story?id=5031168

ESPN.com IllustrationTracking the 40-plus years of coaching of Monte Kiffin. His career began as a graduate assistant at Nebraska in 1966, and he's now the defensive coordinator for his son, Lane, at USC.
LOS ANGELES -- Monte Kiffin turned 70 a few weeks ago, but it sounds as if he plans on doing this for a while.
"I'm going to coach forever," Kiffin said the other day, looking like he could, in his USC windbreaker, black slacks and tennis shoes. "I don't hunt. I don't golf. I don't fish. I don't bowl. I love coaching."



Kiffin convinced his father, Monte, to leave the NFL and join his at Tennessee last season.


When you think about it, why wouldn't he bask in this moment for a while? Kiffin appears to be in the ideal place for a man of his years, enjoying a lion-in-winter period few coaches are fortunate enough to experience late in their careers.
One of his sons, Lane, is his boss, the head coach at USC. The other, 28-year-old Chris, is on USC's staff as a graduate assistant. The trio might have united a year ago, but Lane didn't want to ruffle any feathers (at least not back then) at Tennessee.
"Two Kiffins right off the bat, it looks like a family picnic or something," Monte said.
If his kid hadn't suddenly become football's next wunderkind -- Lane is working in his third major head-coaching gig before the age of 35 -- Monte Kiffin wouldn't be sitting in his second-floor office at Heritage Hall looking at film on a wall-mounted flat-screen TV, as he was the other day.
This is a man who turned down chances to be the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and St. Louis Rams because he was so comfortable with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, their owners and the reported $2 million per year they were paying him.
"I wouldn't have gone to college just to do it," Kiffin said, between sips of coffee. "It was about my son. If it was a middle-of-the-road college, with all due respect, I probably wouldn't have gone."
The coach

When USC introduced Lane Kiffin as Pete Carroll's successor two months ago, most of the attention and virtually all of the questions gravitated toward the young coach and his fiery recruiting coordinator, Ed Orgeron.
Monte Kiffin sat quietly in the corner at that press conference. You wouldn't have known it at the time, but he might have been USC's biggest acquisition that day.

“On defense, there's not a better coach in the world than Monte Kiffin.
You really can't get any better than that.
” -- Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll

Kiffin puts together fast, ball-hawking defenses that bend but don't break, yielding yards but not points, the kind that have shoved their way into the Super Bowl more and more often in recent years. His protégés are a who's who of the coaching industry.
"On defense, there's not a better coach in the world than Monte Kiffin," Carroll told ESPNLosAngeles last week. "You really can't get any better than that."
The defense Kiffin devised with Tony Dungy for the Minnesota Vikings and then transported to Tampa was the ultimate antivenin to West Coast-style offenses. It wasn't until the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in 2002 that people gave it a name: Tampa 2.
By then, the Buccaneers had fired Dungy and replaced him with Jon Gruden, so Kiffin drew much of the praise. He sustained the success, with the Buccaneers posting top-10 defenses year after year, even as other coaches came and went and players broke down and retired, replaced by fresh bodies.
'Tampa 2'

The details might be complicated, but the gist of Kiffin's defense is delightfully simple. Two safeties divide the deep part of the field shading toward the sidelines; the cornerbacks crowd the receivers at the line, working to reroute them; and the middle linebacker runs down the middle of the field to cover up the soft spot of a traditional Cover 2.

It wasn't until the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in 2002 that people gave Kiffin's defense a name: Tampa 2.


Converting it to the college game has been the challenge. The hashmarks are farther apart in college, the practice time a fraction of what it is in the pros. NFL teams, with $10 million quarterbacks, rarely run the option. It's everywhere in college.
That's when Carroll entered the picture again. Kiffin and Carroll met in 1977 on Lou Holtz's staff at Arkansas. When Monte Kiffin got the head job at North Carolina State, he hired Carroll, then a graduate assistant, as his defensive coordinator.
Thirty years later, the relationship flipped. After 26 years in the NFL, Kiffin had some things to learn about the college game, so he hopped on a plane for Los Angeles to watch the way Carroll adapted concepts he had once taught him. He spent two days around Carroll's practice field at USC.
"I was his mentor, and he turned and was mentoring me," Kiffin said. "After a while, Pete got more experienced and he was his own guy, and I would use things he was using."
Kiffin, a native of Lexington, Neb., speaks in a raspy whisper, the words coming out in short bursts. He seems particularly stumped when the topic of discussion turns to him. He doesn't offer much when someone asks him to describe his contributions to the game.
"Oh gosh, you'd have to ask somebody else that," Kiffin said.

Son also rises

His son was there each step of the way, at North Carolina State and with seven NFL teams thereafter. He ought to know as well as anybody what his father's legacy is.
"I would like to think he'll go down as one of the most successful assistant coaches ever to coach in the game," Lane Kiffin said.

But the father-son dynamic can be a challenging one, particularly when the son is in a position of authority. In the Kiffins' case, the roles are reversed from what the Bowdens and Spurriers had.
"It's really not strange, because of his personality," Lane Kiffin said. "He's so easygoing and gets along with everybody. I love it from that standpoint, not because I'm related to him, but because he's such a phenomenal coach and teacher of our players and coaches."
So now, at an age when many coaches are looking to retire, Monte Kiffin dives into a whole new set of challenges, in a city he's never lived in. He jokes that if he'd known he would be in Knoxville only one year, he wouldn't have bothered to buy a house.
"I wish Lane had told me," Monte said. "I would have rented."


Puzzle pieces

Maybe it's the head coach part of his personality, but Monte Kiffin's not entirely sure he has the personnel to put together a dominant USC defense this fall.
He points out the exodus of linebackers to the NFL two years ago and the emptying of the defensive backfield this past winter, the two serious injuries to blue-chip linebackers Frankie Telfort and Jarvis Jones. Then he thinks about all the offensive skill players the Trojans landed in this past recruiting class.
"Hopefully they keep us off the field a lot," Kiffin said.
Mark Saxon covers USC for ESPNLosAngeles.com

[TripletDaddy]

Reports from Spring practice: CLK keeping the intensity amped while preaching team concept

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/andy_staples/03/31/kiffin.usc.spring/index.html?eref=sihp

What was different? The attitude, according to the players. Kiffin, defensive coordinator dad Monte, defensive line coach Ed Orgeron and the rest of the USC staff aped former coach Pete Carroll's intense practice style, but they added some twists. All lines had to be touched on sprints. All snaps had to be perfect. Fumbles were punished immediately.
"The attitude has changed," quarterback Matt Barkley said. "I've said it before. It's just a little more -- not dedication -- but being on task. It's more disciplined now. It starts with the coaching staff. The tempo starts with them."
Tailback Allen Bradford went a step further. "I'm not saying we got out of hand with coach Carroll, but a lot of guys were doing their own individual thing," Bradford said. "Kiffin's trying to get us in the mindset that it's going to take a team to win."

[Jarid in Cedar]

This run is just ridiculous. (video is embedding in short article linked)

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Video-Dillon-Baxter-breaks-ankles-drops-jaws-a?urn=ncaaf,233725

[TripletDaddy]

This run is just ridiculous. (video is embedding in short article linked)

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/footbal...n=ncaaf,233725

D Bax is getting a lot of run in spring training. Also, Kyle Prater. They should be impact players right away.

The run you linked is from a recent scrimmage and obviously drew comparisons to the Fresno State game. Not sure anyone should be going there just yet, but it is exciting to have him carrying the ball along with Bradford. Thunder and Lightening 2, maybe.

[Blueintheface]

This run is just ridiculous. (video is embedding in short article linked)

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/footbal...n=ncaaf,233725

I'm tellin ya, they don't rebuild...and it sucks.

[dabrockster]

This run is just ridiculous. (video is embedding in short article linked)

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/footbal...n=ncaaf,233725

Hmmm...

I'd say that's slightly anticlimatic, especially when you consider that the members of the secondary falling all over themselves as Baxter hits the R1 button were apparently walk-ons, a hugely mitigating factor in the star count even if there were a few front-seven starters on the field, too.

[Art Vandelay]

The song girls are showing what Kiffin's inaugural season in LA is going to be like. Would the proper term be bosom-flop or belly-flop still technically correct? Almost look Where's Waldo, how is the creepiest spectator? My vote is for shades, mustache, wedding ring and pretending to talk on phone will secretly recording with his spycam.

[TripletDaddy]

Thats the annual Swim With Mike. they do that every year, plus they play inner tube water polo. It is some sort of fundraiser.

[Lost Student]

"I don't hunt. I don't golf. I don't fish. I don't bowl. I love coaching."

The next time USC fails to make a bowl game, I'm bringing out Monte's quote about not bowling. Oh man, it's gonna be good.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

Pete left because he was scared of the Ducks. Sorry. Just being honest!

http://espn.go.com/blog/pac10/post/_/id/9380/did-carroll-leave-usc-because-he-was-scared-of-oregon

[Coach McGuirk]

Bush settles with the guys that allegedly paid him. Isn't that an admission of guilt and huge trouble for USC? I hope not but,

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/article/2010-04-21/bush-settles-lake-wont-give-deposition