Defensive line coach Ed Orgeron said all the right things today (if you were Lane Kiffin) during his interview on the Petros and Money show. He said Kiffin is “bright” and “articulate,” which is what he tells reporters.
He even took what I considered a shot at defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin when he said, “We’ve answered some of the questions we had on the staff.”
What he didn’t answer was why so many decommits were specifically defensive linemen and he didn’t provide much reason for optimism if you doubt Kiffin can turn around the program or that players no longer believe in Kiffin. But Orgeron is an assistant coach, not a miracle worker.
Here is the full interview.
“But Oregon is an assistant coach, not a miracle worker.”
Oregon is a State.
Kinda like how you are a putz beat writer and not a legitmate source of quality information on USC athletics.
Yet you keep coming back
It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, or Taylor Swift at the Grammy’s.
Are you referring to USC’s football program in the foreseeable future? Because that is why I periodically read Wolf’s insights and the inevitable volley of comments that follow his every maxim and pithy remark.
“Periodically”? Come on now, Bucket. That’s a bit of an understatement.
Jezro, lay off this dude!! we need new blood around here!! and you go around accusing every new reader of being an imposter!!
what kind of manners is that?? dig yourself, man!!
Charles B., don’t mind little Jethro too much. That guy is delusional. I’m not the first person he’s accused of being you or someone else, and I can bet I won’t be the last. He’s a bit paranoid (if you know what I mean).
If all you can do is check grammar and spelling on a sports blog you need to get a life. What an @ss.
Optimism isn’t really important, either Kiffin will turn it around, or someone else will.
Right, Ed is supposed to trash his boss. Scott, what do you really think about YOUR boss? Exactly.
“What he didn’t answer”…kinda like your “Open Forum”. If you want these answers, interview him yourself.
That would take to much effort. He rather get his inside news “from someone who heard someone mention”
Like a famous American once said: “the bigger the cap, the bigger the peelin’.”
Nothing Orgeron says can conceal the terse and pithy truth that Haden’s USC athletics are in shambles and that football is now the most prescient harbinger of further disasters to come over at Figueroa.
USC will always be our conservative (and outdated), arrogant little brother–a snotty sibling that bought his way into a school ranked relatively high by only one source (thanks Steve Sample, you’re tops in my kid bro’s book!), yet dissed by every other relevant and respected ranking.
Now that football, the only thing that the trolljans had, is smoldering in front of their very own eyes, trolljans are feeling low and grasping for answers.
It’s no secret that the stereotype that you buy your degree at USC still persists and that’s why a lot of employers don’t hire trolljans; that, compounded by a pervasive feeling that everything at SUC sucks will play a number on your uni and its fans for a long, long time.
#karma
Why do you say “trolljans”?
I wrote trolljans because it’s fitting for trolljans.
Who is this “guest”? Is someone getting his many accounts confused again?
Ditto. What this dude said.
“USC will always be our conservative (and outdated), arrogant little brother”
You must be a Cal fan.
I can see why you are confused, WEB. A lot of fans from myriad universities can state that very same quote (as usc is not truly held in high regard as a top university–go ask at top universities around the U.S. and report back) and they wouldn’t be wrong. However, I’ve always been a proud Bruin. No Sample-led shenanigans to buy one ranking can fool the truly learned and lettered with regards to the field of academia. USC was once a school solely known for a winning football tradition; now, they’ve not even that. Here’s a relevant quote that I like, written by a sage man: “The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning…it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment
between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from
which forms the secret of civilization.” Now, if only baby brother could understand that.
My joke was about your use of “little brother”. USC is the older school of the two.
Regardless,
I have degrees from both USC and UCLA, and in my experience the student
bodies of the two schools are extremely similar (though USC is the more
diverse these days,with affirmative action curtailed at UCLA). That’s
why the USC-UCLA rivalry has always struck me as a weird one, more like a
rivalry between two high schools in the same town. Culturally, they’re really not that different — though of course everyone gets offended when I say that.
Regarding
Sample, one thing he did do was greatly increase the number of
full-tuition scholarships offered to incoming freshmen. In my class-year, there were plenty of us who had turned down offers from more
respected universities because of those scholarships.
I realize that USC has been around longer, which makes it all the more perplexing that UCLA had a meteoric rise from its inception, surpassing USC within a relatively short frame of time and eventually being mentioned in the same breath with other the top universities in the world. I write this from firsthand experience, as I hold degrees from UCLA and another top-ranked university (an Ivy which shall go unnamed), the latter at which I met ONE trojan during my tenure as a student, while meeting countless UCLA grads (not to mention several graduates from several other UC schools). Fact. You seem like a sharp, resourceful guy (after all, you graduated from UCLA grad school) and I’m sure you can tell that I was simply personifying the school by using the metaphor of a little brother. I used to think that the student populations were similar. However, recent business trips to USC that involved communication with students, staff, and administration reminded me of an old plaque on the UCLA campus (Bunche Hall) that shows gratitude to the university for allowing Jewish students when other universities in the area (i.e. SC) categorically denied them admission. Also, via my personal experience and from what I’ve read on USC blogs, UCLA fans don’t as easily tolerate so much racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and hate-laden vitriol as do TrollJans. (If you are a person of color affiliated with USC, how do mitigate and sort that?) I dislike hateful vitriol just as much as the next reasonable person, but USC commenters take the cake–and on several blogs. When I was an undergrad at UCLA, it was the most diverse campus in the country, but, alas, you’re right that the richness and difference of intellectual opinion derived from diversity has been hampered to some degree. At any rate, it’s funny when SC alums said it was the end of UCLA with all the CA budget cuts–UCLA recently raised more money than ever, breaking national records in the process (it’s in our DNA). Sample was a shrewd man. He figured out how to swing more money SC’s way and how to raise the UN&WR rankings. That, however, has limited cachet when you consider everything in the aggregate. I’ve met several SC fans that have admitted that they are “sickened” and “embarrassed” by the arrogance and ignorance of fellow USC fans. You’d be hard-pressed to find UCLA fans that will truthfully say the same…it’s just a different and more respectful culture overall. Until I witness meaningful changes that change my perception of usc as a university largely stuck on reactionary, materialistic, good ol’ boy politics (not everybody, to be sure, but far too many alums and affiliates), then I have to be real and say that USC is still our little sibling.
Hey lunchie how’s that 80 yd. practice field working out?
Like most other people I know who attended USC’s film school, my feelings about the place are complicated, so there is a limit to how much effort I will put into defending USC. Nonetheless, I just find it bizarre to see UCLA folks talking about UCLA like it’s the Yale of the western U.S. In my profession, I have found that UCLA definitely takes a backseat to Stanford and Berkeley (fair or not).
I was a film major at USC, so I don’t really know what it would be like to attend USC and major in something normal, like History. All I know is that most of the people I met at USC were pretty much like the students I met at UCLA (and, for that matter, the Cal grads I met at UCLA’s law school, where they were the largest contingent) — mostly bright, mostly from California’s suburbs. (To be fair, since I moved to California in 1994, I also have never been able to discern the supposedly significant differences between Northern Californians and Southern Californians, and many people think I’m wrong about that — especially the Northern Californians, who seem very invested in the notion).
The stereotypes about USC have been around a long time. In Upton Sinclair’s 1920’s novel Oil!, the young protagonist attends a barely-disguised USC, and the image was already formed — a school full of privileged kids obsessed with a crooked football team, etc. (Then again, if I recall correctly, the protagonist meets his Jewish socialist future wife at that school, so even then, there were exceptions enrolled). That image will take a long time to die out, especially since some element of that old culture still survives. But that element survives in almost all large universities, and probably always will, so long as there are fraternities. Regardless, UCLA fans often seem unaware that most of USC has nothing to do with any of that, these days. I doubt that my wife’s uncle, who has been a USC professor for decades, spends much time posting anti-Semitic comments on message boards, given that he is Jewish himself.
Re: fans’ comments on blogs, maybe you weren’t reading this blog when a guy calling himself “BruinRob” spent what felt like two years posting daily comments in which he would use letters and punctuation marks to draw vulgar images and then invite us to “Taste it!” In fairness to UCLA, BruinRob admitted that he hadn’t gone to school there, but I’ve seen far nastier things on the Daily News UCLA blog from persons who probably did go to UCLA. I don’t know if he’s still around, but there used to a be a Christian fundamentalist who would hijack comment threads and turn them into a bunch of ugly Muslim-bashing. And then you have the nasty comments from some of the Bruin trolls on this blog, paradoxically posting homophobic comments while claiming that they are only taunting the homophobes (although again, to be fair, I figure only about half the people who post on these blogs went to any college at all, let alone USC or UCLA).
Anyway, I haven’t found UCLA fans to be morally superior, as a group, in any respect. My sister-in-law was at the most recent USC-UCLA game with her Bruin-fan husband, and she said that the people around them roared like savages when Barkley was taken out by that hit from behind. Whatever the relative merits of these schools as academic institutions, football fandom is about a bunch of tribal nonsense, which then gets taken to nasty extremes on these anonymous message boards. I don’t really know why the Daily News has allowed this place to become such a sewer, but over time I have come to admire the free-wheeling, anything-goes atmosphere in this clown show.
My thoughts echo those of m00t above.
Kiffin’s here. He’s under pressure. He’s making changes. It will get better, or it won’t. Very much an open question.
Why rehash criticisms that have all been leveled in spades?
Firing KP looks more erroneous than not, but it’s better to wait until the new staff is in place before finalizing any judgment. Furthermore, I doubt that the loss of a RB coach who didn’t have the power to implement strategy is going to significantly affect the outcome of 2013.
Should Orgeron be blamed because so many DLs decommitted? Very doubtful conclusion. The defense was crappy last year. Many DL’s were recruited, so more could decommit. They committed to a 4-3 and now must play in a 3-4, for a DC who’s an unknown. Fitts was a casualty of signing McQuay (although it may well have been handled indelicately by LK). Hatcher is from KY and opted for the SEC (best DLs in the country). Prevot is from TX, very underweight for a DL in USC’s 3-4 (does he want to play OLB?), and chose the #1 or #2 team in the conference. Vanderdoes was more of a surprise, but he’s not from greater L.A., and pursued his recruitment in a very calculated way. ND had a great defense in 2012, played in the NC game, has stable coaching, is not under sanction, and is an excellent university. ND was hardly an idiotic choice for Vanderdoes. On the other hand, in the big picture, I think that Jalen Ramsey was somewhat foolish to choose FSU (then again, why fire USC’s DB coach right before NSD?).
Bottom line: it’s very early to jump all over Ed Orgeron after all
that he has accomplished at USC. Besides his history in recruiting, the
DL was the least of last year’s disappointments. Scott is being petty,
which he sometimes is.
I’m with m00t. Change is afoot. Onward and forward. Fight on.
Thank you Ben!
Rumor has it that Ramsey wanted to go to USC and had his LOI docs completely filled out the night before NSD, but his mom wouldn’t sign the LOI docs, and forced him to FSU.
In other news, whether you’re an SC fan or a UCLA fan, both schools have great educators and curriculums and there are reasons why kids choose to go to both schools. I chose USC because UCLA’s business program was non-existent and I didn’t want to get an Econ major, especially one that was based on theory vs USC’s B-school programs that were based on practical solutions to solve today’s problems. With that said, I have many friends who either went to UCLA or are UCLA football fans, and they are welcome in my home. They even go to the USC games, because up until last year, the UCLA football program was mismanaged by every coach they had since Donahue. USC capitalized on that set of hiring errors by the UCLA AD for a long time.
Today, UCLA, Oregon, ND and Stanford are capitalizing on USC’s limited schollie problem, and should any of these schools experience this type of recruiting challenges, I’ll bet that no school could get through these kinds of issues better than USC. Alabama didn’t, SMU didn’t, and neither will PSU.
Enjoy your short lived uptick with Mora. Time will prove UCLA’s ability to regain dominance in the LA market. One year doesn’t make a dynasty, and one win doesn’t make you champion of LA.
Yes, USC tripped and fell to the ground, and teams like UCLA, and the little brothers of the game, are kicking us while we’re down. You have to becasue when we get back up, dust off the uniforms and straighten out our helmets, we will kick your ever-lovin, freekin’ butt all over town. You can bet on it, lil Bruin brother. Same for Oregon, Stanford and ND.
The only reason you guys are recruiting the way you are is becasue 10 kids a year cannot play for USC, so that puts out there 30 kids going to your school, as a 2nd choice placement.
Enjoy your notoriety today, for tomorrow you’ll be coming into the Coliseum with your tails between your legs, and the USC Trojans will run onto your field, the USC TMB Drum Major will strike his sword into your field turf, and we will leave victorious, with your blood on the fireld of play, wondering “WTF” just happened.
Fight On sports fans.
Beat everybody!
For those who respond with hatred, that’s cool. The more your spew out your hatred the better you state our case that you are still afraid of our team.