The Titan sue Lane Kiffin and USC over coach’s hiring.
I love how the suit mentions Kiffin’s classless behavior re: UT.
USC, I hope you’re proud of yourselves and your new coach. I think he’s just the guy to change the “fuck the rules, win at all costs” attitude that has recently cost you so much. Good luck and see you back in the BCS in 5 or 10 years.
Heard about this. The suit, IMHO, is very likely to succeed.
Really? Suing for hiring a coach seems a bit childish to me.
Teams will have no issue about firing a coach on short notice, even one who has been with a team for several years. If the Titans started the year 0-4 and then fired Pola would there be a thread about how unfairly he was treated?
Maybe. On the other hand, if they fired him, they would probably owe him money on his contract. The problem is that Pola signed a contract stating he wouldn’t entertain offers from other teams without written permission. According to the suit, USC and Kiffin knew about the contract and proceeded to contact Pola anyway.
It’s all part of Kiffin’s attitude that the rules don’t apply to him. It’ll be interesting to see how this all works out, but I put the over/under on Kiffin’s tenure at 2 years. What’ll be even more interesting is where he goes after this. He’s previously angered a significant portion of major college football, now he’s gonna piss of the NFL? He apparently thinks he’s got a lifetime job at USC and won’t ever need another job. I think he’s wrong.
In general, you can hire assistant coaches away from pro team, but you are required by contract to ask permission of the team first. This is routinely granted, but not always. Kiffin lost out on another coach he wanted to hire when the team gave him a big raise after being contacted, so he wanted to avoid that.
But, football is a game of rules. The point of football on the field is to follow the rules. Kiffen would be incensed if a team he was playing against threw an illegal forward pass, or tripped one of his players, or gave an obvious late hit.
What this shows is that Kiffen is contemptuous of the rules. Breaking a contract like this is a clear sign that Kiffen will do whatever he wants, and if that means breaking recruiting rules, he will do it in an eyeblink and then jump ship as soon as the NCAA starts sniffing around.
Not true. It’s inducement to breach of contract. The contract protects both parties: the coach and the team. The coach can’t just walk out whenever he feels like it (i.e., potentially kneecapping a team mid-season) and the team guarrantees some cashola. And it is very definitely illegal to induce someone to break a contract.
Isn’t it obvious? By this time next year, Lane Kiffin will be the new Head Coach, General Manager and part owner of the Dallas Cowboys. 2 games into the season he will quit to accept a position as the new President-for-Life of Guatemala. By 2015 he will have announced his retirement as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court to explore all the opportunities he never had time for in his exhausting and comprehensive nearly-8-year-long professional career.
No one - and I mean no one - has ever failed upwards more consistently and impressively than Lane Kiffin.
Well, first of all, this is yet another log on the “Lane Kiffin is an asshat” fire.
But, what really makes me wonder about this is the timing. Kiffin was hired by USC in January. He’s only now, in late July, hiring his running back coach?? One of the first orders of business for a head coach is to assemble his staff…and running back coach is a fairly important member of the staff. Yes, it sounds like part of this is that he didn’t get his earlier choice, Eric Bienemy, but why wait until just before the season to make this signing?
Kiffin’s departure from Tennessee underlines the fact that he clearly has no respect whatsoever for commitments. So, I’m not surprised that he’s done something like this.
Legality isn’t an issue. “Sue” means it’s a civil matter. Anybody can sue anybody for anything.
If the NCAA were a publically trade company I would start buying stock as fast as I could. Thier revenue is going to triple just from the fines that USC is bound to generate under Kiffin.