George's Potpourri 7/28 - Full Régime Change

For the first time we have a full régime change - a new university president, new athletic director, and a new head football coach. In fact when you look at last year's coaching staff; only one assistant coach is currently on this year's staff (John Morton). It is about as complete a changeover as you can get and it portends new vigor and seriousness. There may be some learning curve to slow us at the start but you have to respect the credentials of our new coaches, and I look forward to success.

Lane Kiffin's selection is a bit of a gamble. He has experience as a head coach but his record is mixed. As for his style, you can't tell much about next season's strategy from the spring practice we saw. However, the change I saw that impressed me the most was the players had greatly increased enthusiasm and work ethic. That's a big part of winning football programs and we didn't have it last year. Coach Kiffin impresses me as a "no nonsense" coach in the McKay tradition. This could be the right answer in our current situation.

Over the years most of our supporters drank a lot of hallucinatory Kool-Aid. In my opinion, we usually think we are better than we are. Last year we talked ourselves into believing that Pete had made major upgrades to the staff by adding Jeremy Bates and Brian Schneider. The weak results speak for themselves. To compare last year's staff with this seasons', I built the table at the end of this column.

I'm into the Kool-Aid again myself because I think this year's staff is going to be great. I think this team can run the table. I think we can win it all. [Well, at least the AP national championship.] There is some handwringing about the transfers - but who besides Henderson was anyone counting on to play a major role this year. Even Henderson was no sure thing to break into the lineup, in my opinion.

Learning curve

I'm expecting a learning curve for the new staff i.e. some mistakes and miscues in the early games. Even with experienced professionals, instant communications within the context of a game takes some practice. You can't tell much about jurisdictions from the titles given the assistant coaches. Luckily we have the easiest beginning schedule in years. Hawaii was 6-7 last season and Virginia was 3-9. It is fortuitous for our new staff to start out with those two opponents.

The exact line of authority on defense is obscure. Monte Kiffin is Asst. Head Coach but Ed Orgeron is Defensive Coordinator. Apparently everyone knows who does what because the defense performed without a problem in spring camp. I suspect that Monte will prevail if disputes arise. On offense, Kennedy Pola has the title of Offensive coordinator. But before Kennedy was hired, Head Coach Lane Kiffin said that he would call plays. I'm sure that Kennedy will have input but I still expect Lane to be the play caller. My guess is that John Morton will be in the booth for the offense but I haven't seen an official announcement yet. Pola provides so much energy; he shouldn't be off-field. It will all work out, there's too much experience among this group to anticipate turf wars this early.

The table

Each NCAA D-1 team is allowed a head coach and 9 assistants. In the right column of the table below are the coaches from last season with their job titles. There is a lot of job-title overlap which I believe was an effort on Pete's part to entice coaches with resume enhancing job descriptions. But, LK has done much the same thing. I guess it is the new thing in order to recruit a quality staff.

The left column has this year's coaching staff. This is what they were doing last season:

• Lane Kiffin was the head coach at Tennessee
• Monte Kiffin was the Defensive Coordinator at Tennessee
• John Baxter was the Associate Head Coach, Special Teams and Tight Ends at Fresno State
• Kennedy Pola coached Running Backs for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
• James Cregg was the Tennessee Offensive Line Coach.
• Clay Helton was the Offensive Coordinator and Quarterback coach for Memphis
• John Morton was the USC Offensive Coordinator and coached Wide Receivers.
• Ed Orgeron was Assistant Head Coach, Defensive Line Coach and Recruiting Coordinator at Tennessee.
• Joe Barry coached Linebackers for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
• Willie Mack Garza coached Defensive Backs for Tennessee.
• Keary Colbert played Wide Receiver in the NFL for five seasons.
• Sammy Knight played DB  in the NFL for eleven years.