THE FAST LANE
Del Olaleye: Meet college football's next Steve Spurrier
Del Olaleye
Jan 17, 2018, 3:42 pm
Lane Kiffin is fun for college football. FAUOwlaccess.com
The best thing to happen to college football this season was Lane Kiffin moving to Boca Raton. Fortunately for Kiffin and the rest of the college football world Boca Raton is home to Florida Atlantic University and they just happened to have a job opening. There has been a void in college football created by the departure of Steve Spurrier from the sport. Really this void was created the minute the OBC (Ol’ Ball Coach) left Florida for the Redskins job. Spurrier did a great job rebuilding the South Carolina program when he returned to college football, leading that program to three straight 11-win seasons in his time there but he wasn’t the same swaggering sh-- talker that everyone feared while he was at Florida. He wasn’t a mute at South Carolina but he was at his best when he was leading the Fun and Gun at his alma mater. No coach was safe and even legends of the sport caught it, on Peyton Manning: "I know why Peyton came back for his senior year. He wanted to be a three-time star of the Citrus Bowl."
Spurrier was one of a kind and the sport is worse off without him. That brings me back to Kiffin. He isn’t Spurrier yet. He doesn’t have the cache, the wins or half the respect, but what he does have is no filter, arrogance, a great offensive mind and insight into Alabama, the most dominant program in all of college football. Saban and Kiffin was an odd partnership the moment Kiffin’s hiring by Alabama was announced. How would Saban’s process-oriented approach mesh with Kiffin’s less than stellar past? Pretty, pretty good. Three CFP appearances from 2014-2016 including a National Title in the 2015 season.
The expected rough patches did occur. The most noteworthy being a sideline argument during the National semifinal against the Washington Huskies. Kiffin, already named the FAU head coach, was let go by Saban during title game week for what Saban thought would be in the best interest of the student athletes at both schools. Alabama went on to lose to Clemson and Deshaun Watson in the final seconds of the title game in Steve Sarkisian’s only game as the Bama OC. Kiffin, when asked about his departure in a September 2017 article by the Washington Post said he believed Alabama would be a two-time defending champion if he had been allowed to coach through the title game.
Kiffin kept his eye trained on the Crimson Tide in 2017 while guiding Florida Atlantic to a perfect 8-0 record in conference play and their first Conference USA title. That early success allows for the twitter shots at Saban. Pointing out Saban’s apparent hypocrisy regarding the requirements for making the College Football Playoff are only accepted because Kiffin won eleven games in year one. Without the early validation Kiffin would be subject to jokes about going down to Boca Raton to retire. He’d be quiet. Quiet Kiffin is the worst Kiffin. Out from under the Alabama machine and at a program who would just like to win some damn games he is free to do and say what he wants.
Telling the college football world via the Dan Patrick Show that its newest star Tua Tagovailoa would have transferred from Alabama had he not played in the title game is how he started 2018. According to Kiffin, Tagovailoa thought he should be starting but Saban wouldn’t give him the opportunity. This is why Kiffin’s continued on-field success is so important. I don’t care what he has to say about Butch Davis at FIU or Doc Holliday at Marshall. No one really cared what Steve Spurrier had to say at Duke about the Wake Forest coach either. Once Spurrier was hired by Florida and starting poking at the blue bloods in the SEC his legend grew. The great offenses and all that winning in the '90s certainly didn’t hurt as well.
We should all hope Kiffin does enough winning at FAU to move on to a bigger job. In the Big Ten perhaps? Kiffin vs Harbaugh? Kiffin vs Meyer? Game week would be better than the actual game. He’d be hated by every fanbase in the conference but his own. Hating everybody but your own is what college football is about and the former USC and Tennessee Vols coach would be a perfect foil. The next big school to hire Kiffin will have a target on its back the moment the introductory press conference begins because Coach Lane can’t help himself.
The great Childish Gambino once said, “They don’t listen when you mumble.” Kiffin wants to be heard.
Meet the next Steve Spurrier. Lane Kiffin.
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There was a conversation Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell had during training camp, the topic being all the teams that were generating the most preseason buzz in the Eastern Conference. Boston was coming off an NBA championship. New York got Karl-Anthony Towns. Philadelphia added Paul George.
The Cavs? Not a big topic in early October. And Mitchell fully understood why.
“What have we done?” Mitchell asked. “They don't talk about us. That's fine. We'll just hold ourselves to our standard.”
That approach seems to be working.
For the first time in 36 seasons — yes, even before the LeBron James eras in Cleveland — the Cavaliers are atop the NBA at the 25-game mark. They're 21-4, having come back to earth a bit following a 15-0 start but still better than anyone in the league at this point.
“We've kept our standards pretty high,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “And we keep it going.”
The Cavs are just one of the surprise stories that have emerged as the season nears the one-third-done mark. Orlando — the only team still unbeaten at home — is off to its best start in 16 years at 17-9 and having done most of that without All-Star forward Paolo Banchero. And Houston is 16-8, behind only the Cavs, Boston, Oklahoma City and Memphis so far in the race for the league's best record.
Cleveland was a playoff team a year ago, as was Orlando. And the Rockets planted seeds for improvement last year as well; an 11-game winning streak late in the season fueled a push where they finished 41-41 in a major step forward after a few years of rebuilding.
“We kind of set that foundation last year to compete with everybody,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Obviously, we had some ups and downs with winning and losing streaks at times, but to finish the season the way we did, getting to .500, 11-game winning streak and some close losses against high-level playoff teams, I think we kind of proved that to ourselves last year that that's who we're going to be.”
A sign of the respect the Rockets are getting: Oddsmakers at BetMGM Scorebook have made them a favorite in 17 of 24 games so far this season, after favoring them only 30 times in 82 games last season.
“Based on coaches, players, GMs, people that we all know what they're saying, it seems like everybody else is taking notice as well,” Udoka said.
They're taking notice of Orlando as well. The Magic lost their best player and haven't skipped a beat.
Banchero's injury after five games figured to doom Orlando for a while, and the Magic went 0-4 immediately after he tore his oblique. Entering Tuesday, they're 14-3 since — and now have to regroup yet again. Franz Wagner stepped into the best-player-on-team role when Banchero got hurt, and now Wagner is going to miss several weeks with the exact same injury.
Ask Magic coach Jamahl Mosley how the team has persevered, and he'll quickly credit everyone but himself. Around the league, it's Mosley getting a ton of the credit — and rightly so — for what Orlando is doing.
“I think that has to do a lot with Mose. ... I have known him a long time,” Phoenix guard Bradley Beal said. “A huge fan of his and what he is doing. It is a testament to him and the way they’ve built this team.”
The Magic know better than most how good Cleveland is, and vice versa. The teams went seven games in an Eastern Conference first-round series last spring, the Cavs winning the finale at home to advance to Round 2.
Atkinson was brought in by Cleveland to try and turn good into great. The job isn't anywhere near finished — nobody is raising any banners for “best record after 25 games” — but Atkinson realized fairly early that this Cavs team has serious potential.
“We’re so caught up in like the process of improve, improve, improve each game, improve each practice," Atkinson said. “That’s kind of my philosophy. But then you hit 10-0, and obviously the media starts talking and all that, and you’re like, ‘Man, this could be something special brewing here.’”