Note to Pat Haden:  Winning coaches come in and improve programs from the beginning and progress forward each year.  Within 3 years, you know what you have.  Mediocre performing teams under the same coach do not suddenly surge in year 4 or 5.  Once a loser always a loser.  Look at Norv Turner for example – over and over teams give him a chance as head coach – but it is the same losing approach each time.  But take someone like Belichick, Harbaugh or Chip Kelly – improvement from the beginning and progressively better performance each year thereafter until the program is at the top.  What I can’t understand is why smart people in these organizations (e.g., Pat Haden) don’t recognize this obvious pattern.  Once a winner, pretty much always a winner.  And by the way, anyone who has ever played football, even just at the high school level, can tell you that playing good fundamental football (e.g., WRAPPING THE RUNNER WHEN YOU TACKLE OTHERWISE THEY’LL BREAK THE TACKLE 50% OF THE TIME!!!!!), and having a strong line (offensive and defensive), and inspiring the best from your players, is more important than recruiting great skills players, although you need them too.  Without the fundamentals and the big uglies, you can’t dominate.  Lane’s problems are he’s not bringing in the best linemen, the staff apparently doesn’t emphasize the fundamentals enough (as evidenced by the fact that my 80 year old grandma giving me a hug during the holidays wraps better and has better tacking form), and he doesn’t seem to be able to inspire the players to give their best and rise up above it all.  Winning is about playing fundamentally good football and inspiring your players to give their best . . . and winning coaches inspire their players to make the coach they respect proud of them and to make themselves better men.  I am not an insider at the USC program, but it certainly appears that Lane Kiffin is not inspiring his players and the players don’t seem  to be in the right frame of mind.  Coaches that suck always seem to lack passion and claim that their players are advanced enough that they don’t need to be inspired or motivated – in the words of Norv Turner while at the Raiders – “if they are not motivated on their own by now, they never will be”.  Really Norv, because the coaches with fire in their bellies seem to do pretty well to me.  Where is USC’s coach with fire in his belly – getting in players’ faces, celebrating with them when they succeed, etc.  It certainly isn’t Kiffin. As a USC alum and fan, it is torture to know that we are stuck in the middle for the next year because Pat Haden refuses to pull the trigger, and that if we could just find the right dynamic coach, we could get right back on top.  If coaches of far lesser programs can do it with the shortage of talent they have, then we can certainly get back on top despite sanctions – it is no excuse to keep a coach who is not a winner.  And one more time, if the SC defense doesn’t freaking at least WRAP the runners next year, I’m going to pull my hair out!  If you can’t learn the technique of popping the ball out and still wrapping, then don’t try to pop the ball out and just freaking tackle the guy!!!!
 

What criteria gets you to number one? Wins and losses, losing recruits, alums burning the coach in effigy, actual inside the ADs office info!