Coach Lane Kiffin Will Return to USC Football

I watched yesterday's highly-anticipated cross-town matchup, and it was something else.

The Los Angeles Times reports, "UCLA snaps five-game rivalry losing streak with 38-28 win over USC."

But here's Bill Plaschke's column, "Double shock: USC falls, and Pat Haden says Lane Kiffin to return":

Not since Paul Hackett was the coach have I seen a USC team so humbled by the Bruins. Never would I believe a 50-0 score — last season's USC win — could turn around so far, so fast.

The biggest differences between the two seasons have been a quarterback and a coach. Here we all thought Kiffin and Barkley were this town's star duo when, in fact, it has become The Scowling Jim Mora and The Unstoppable Brett Hundley.

Is it any wonder lots of us have been critical of Kiffin? Is there any surprise that, with the Trojans down 24-0 midway through the second quarter, folks were calling for him to be fired at halftime? Heck, after a bad loss in this game last year, the Bruins' Rick Neuheisel was fired two days later. Before Saturday, the three bad USC losses, heaped on top of many distractions, led some university insiders to believe that Kiffin had to win his remaining games to keep his job.

And here's this from yesterday, "Lane Kiffin says he will be back as USC's football coach":

While his team has not performed up to expectations, Kiffin has found controversy off the field. He lied about voting USC No. 1 in a poll early in the season, became embroiled in a tiff about media access and the false accusation of a reporter who wrote about an injury, ruffled feathers by changing the numbers of players during a blowout win over Colorado and most recently denied he had anything to do with a student manager deflating footballs below regulation level during a loss to Oregon.

Oh brother.

Anyway, here's T.J. Simers on the new realities, "No question the Rose Bowl is Jim Mora's house now."