I was only joking yesterday when I said that Mike Garrett might be compiling a coaching wish list then skipping right to No. 5 for good luck on his next hire. It turns out that might have been exactly what Garrett did.

Tuesday night USC announced it had hired former USC offensive coordinator and Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin as the heir to the Trojan throne.

My first thought was: Garrett is really trying to f@*# over USC before he gets fired when the new president takes over the university in August.

Really? You bring in a guy who went 5-15 with the Oakland Raiders and 7-6 with the Tennessee Volunteers as your heir apparent to the greatest coach ever at the university? Is this just one big comedy act because the school knows it can’t replicate Pete Carroll’s performance and feels some sort of sanctions coming from the NCAA, which just finished its investigation probe this week?

Its not only the fact that of every potential coach mentioned about the USC coaching vacancy, Kiffin had the least experience. It’s not because he alienated that whack-job owner Al Davis in Oakland–although there were few rushing to Kiffin’s aid as he was cast aside. And it’s not because he spent only one mediocre season as a college head coach.

The biggest problem with hiring Kiffin right now, this year, this week, is that USC is in the middle of an NCAA shit storm that involved five years worth of anal probing. So you bring in a loudmouth, hothead, who was already being scrutinized by the NCAA at every turn in his first year in Tennessee? That makes a ton of sense.

I’m not sure this wasn’t a big middle finger to the NCAA, Garrett’s way of saying, ‘probe me, see if I care’–insert immature sexual joke here.

Normally in these situations a university will go out of its way to hire a guy with an impeccable record, who wasn’t embroiled in any sort of scandalous actions–whether they were proved true or not–and whom the NCAA will look at in a positive light.

That is not exactly Lane Kiffin.

At Tennessee he was being investigated by the NCAA and the SEC for his recruiting practices while committing at least six secondary NCAA violations. He was also recently blabbering about how it was kosher to have “hostesses” travel some 200 miles to use their female body parts to help woo future players, all the while three of his freshman players were arrested and charged with armed robbery.

You know it’s bad when you hear an elder USC professor proclaim, “Well, maybe they just want somebody who is OK with ‘bending’ the rules.”

The hire isn’t all bad though, right?

One of the best parts about hiring Lane Kiffin is that he is bringing along his father Monte, a defensive guru–and USC’s defense showed this season they badly need one of those–and recruiting wiz Ed Orgeron. Even better might be if they can steal offensive coordinator Norm Chow back to USC and away from UCLA.

But the No. 1 thing about hiring L. Kiffin? All the potential verbal battles with Rick Neuheisel we could be getting starting in the next 24 hours.

I’m praying they headline the next WWE match in L.A. as Lane “The Walking Sanction” Kiffin and Rick “Monopoly Buster” Neuheisel.

Related posts:

1. ⊚  Pete Carroll leaves USC for NFL, Mike Garrett should follow him out the door
2. ⊚  USC Runs The Safe Route
3. ⊚  Standing Out In A Crowd