Football Apocalypse

Al Davis was right. Lane Kiffin is a turd. (But hey, Tennessee fans, at least you got rid of him before he did any permanent damage!)

First, Pete Carroll leaves USC for the Seahawks. This wouldn't mean too much, except that Carroll already has a reputation as an average NFL coach. And the massive cheating scandal at USC is becoming too obvious for even the NCAA to ignore. The fact that the Seahawks don't have a president or GM (the guys to whom the coach typically report) doesn't matter. (Actually, the GM thing doesn't matter much if the franchise is run poorly. See Cleveland: bad owners hire backward. The GM should hire the coach.)

Second, Carroll went out of his way to deny that the move was related to the NCAA investigation. Right. As if he'd have admitted that was it exactly. Good cheaters don't wait to be punished, they move along and let the school take the blame.

Now, Lane Kiffin is leaving Tennessee for USC. After one season. A season in which he racked up quite a number of secondary violations.

Not the best candidate? Correct. Ill-suited for the position? What do you mean? It's not like he was the guy who made some of this happen in the first place. Oh wait, yes he was.

Brian Cook explains in more detail here. Basically, USC is raising a big armored middle finger to the NCAA. Yeah, we cheated our asses off. No, you're not going to do a damn thing about it, because everybody knows you only punish the little guys.

So one of two things should happen. Either USC gets the death penalty, or all hell breaks loose. Um, in a sense. (Because there's obviously a lot of cheating going on with respect to recruiting anyway.)

What will probably happen is that USC will have to forfeit some wins (yawn), they'll be on probation for X years, give up Y scholarships, and everyone involved will say they're very sorry, and they'll promptly start up again as soon as the probation is over.

What ought to happen is that both football and basketball should be suspended for a season; the head coaches and AD should be punished as well. That part's a little tricky, seeing as how they both ran for the door once they saw what was coming. Maybe a fine, one season's salary from each? Even if you banned them from coaching in the NCAA again for life, that might not be that effective. (Although the AD is still there. Suspending him would definitely have an impact ... but then again, if your AD got both your name programs killed for a year, you ought to be doing more than suspending him.)

NCAA, USC has called your bluff. It's time to turn over a full house.