Angry Pope
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The new kid in town always wanted to coach
David White
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Lane Kiffin, 12, should have been tucked away in bed, dreaming glorious designs of being an NFL quarterback who throws winning touchdowns in the Super Bowl.
Only, come 9 o'clock on autumn Monday nights at the Kiffin household, Dad is just getting home from a day's work as an NFL assistant coach. As far as Monte Kiffin was concerned, there were still late-night snacks to munch, sleeping schedules to blow and a prime-time football game to dissect from the living room sofa.
"Mom's trying to put us to bed," said Lane, whose face is still boyish at age 32. "I remember when we were younger, we couldn't stay up that long. Our bedtime was at 9 and, shoot, 'Monday Night Football' was just getting started, so we'd get to stay up as younger kids and watch the first half with my dad.
"That was one of my favorite deals in our house, getting to stay up an extra hour and a half because, one, when you're young, you always want to stay up, and two, you got to watch the game with Dad and hear him talk it through."
Monte would sit on the edge of the couch next to Lane, scribbling football thoughts on a notepad and shouting out plays he thought the teams would run before they could snap the ball. Lane, too, took notes of the mental variety, studying his father's mannerisms and quizzing him about the why's and the how's because, frankly, Lane was never all that interested in the who's of it all unless his dad's team was playing.
While Lane's preteen peers were aspiring to be the next Joe Montana, Lane plotted to be Montana's coach or offensive coordinator. With that in mind, he forfeited his senior season of college football to initiate a coaching path that led him to become the youngest head coach in Oakland Raiders history, and the youngest hired since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970.
"Oh yes, I remember it well," said Monte, now a defensive coordinator with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. "We'd always get out a little early on Mondays so we could spend some time with our families. Lane would stay up and watch the game with me, and he was always asking questions, always very interested in the game itself. He wanted to know why coaches used timeouts when they did, why they ran certain plays, why a coach went for it on fourth down, all about clock management and different schemes.
"They weren't the normal kind of questions you'd expect from someone his age when you're watching a football game. You could tell then he was different in that way."
Lane never has been a head coach at any level. His loftiest title was co-offensive coordinator at USC, where he took the bulk of criticism when the Trojans failed to win national titles the past two college seasons -- think 4th-and-1 with Reggie Bush on the sideline in the BCS game against Texas.
Yet there Lane sat Jan. 23, dressed in Raiders black and white and sitting next to 76-year-old Al Davis. Just 31 years old, Lane had just been hired to replace 61-year-old coach Art Shell, the NFL Hall of Fame player who was fired after a 2-14 season. One week earlier, Lane wasn't even a candidate for the head coaching job.
If any of this comes as a surprise, well, you didn't spend Monday nights at the Kiffin residence back in the late '80s.
"It wasn't a feeling we had," said Heidi Guillot, his older sister. "We just knew that's what he was going to do. We never saw him ever becoming anything else. He was going to be a football coach, just like our dad."
Eventually, Lane thought he would, but first he wanted to play. He was the star quarterback at Jefferson High in Bloomington, Ind., leading the Jaguars to the state playoffs. He bagged a football scholarship to Fresno State, where quarterback Trent Dilfer had just become an NFL first-round draft pick.
Lane was strong-armed, mobile and never took a game-day snap. He was stuck behind future NFL quarterbacks Billy Volek and David Carr when Jeff Tedford, then the offensive coordinator, gave Lane a bright idea.
He could spend 1997, his senior year, as the scout team quarterback, or he could get a new day job as a volunteer graduate assistant. After all, Lane had spent most his time at Fresno State trying to talk his way into coaches meetings, and it's not like he was going to throw a single college pass.
No one remembers the day, but after talking it over with Monte -- who played one year in the CFL before plunging into coaching -- Lane agreed to call it a playing career. There was no hint he'd be an NFL head coach 10 years later. Fifteen, perhaps, but not 10.
"I tried to hang out at the office all the time," Lane said. "They'd have to kick me out of meetings because they'd start talking about other players and they couldn't let me hear all the things they'd say. I wanted in on all that.
"I wasn't going to play football the rest of my life, so to be able to get a jump-start on my career made sense to me."
Tedford had him break down film, conduct down and distance analysis, give input on the offensive game plan and whatever other menial chores seemed fit for the youngest coach on staff. Lane thanked the future Cal head coach by asking questions. Lots of questions. Just like he would with Monte in the family living room, only it seemed so much cuter when Lane was still a kid.
"He would stay there until midnight, watching film, talking football," Tedford said. "He was one of those guys who was always asking questions to the point he would kind of get on your nerves and you'd be, 'Hey, be quiet for a little bit. Stop talking for a minute, would ya?'
"I've known him since he was a freshman in college. I always had this picture of this giddy kid who's on your nerves all the time. Now, when I spend time with him, he's not that guy. He's matured. I've seen huge growth."
The bulk of that came at USC, where Kiffin rose from tight ends coach in 2001 to co-offensive coordinator in 2005-06. All the while, Trojans coach Pete Carroll taught Kiffin how to get players to respond to his know-it-all.
And yes, that was a bit of a chore. Lane grew up the son of a prominent NFL assistant. He was Montana's ball boy at the Pro Bowl. He ate training camp lunch with NFL players, sat in on NFL staff meetings and by age 25 was a defensive assistant coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He really did know it all, or at least a lot, and it showed.
"You could tell right away he was bright, that he'd been around football a long time," said Miami Dolphins defensive coordinator Dom Capers, who worked with Lane at Jacksonville in 2000. "He certainly was inquisitive. He did a lot of the leg work, hard work, had organization skills. He had a lot of good qualities."
Missing from the long list were strong people skills. Lane has been the youngest staffer at career stops with Fresno State, Colorado State, Jacksonville and USC. There, at Camp Carroll, is where Lane was told to ease off from his bad-cop routine with players.
If anyone could set Lane straight, it was going to be Carroll, who worked under Monte Kiffin at Arkansas and North Carolina State when Lane was a child. Carroll remembers running a 6-year-old Lane out of his office for butchering his gameplan with a hole puncher.
"He came on really strong, tried to counter for being young when he got here," Carroll said. "He tried really hard to be strong and tough. I worked with him with that. He's a very smart football coach and knows what he's doing. I didn't think that was something that was necessary for him, so we talked and formulated his style and approach.
"He's never going to be a guy who's looking to be a player's friend, but he's adjusted so well."
To help Lane unwind, Carroll introduced him to Football Golf, which is a hybrid of Frisbee Golf. Lane often played against Steve Sarkisian, the other USC co-offensive coordinator who turned down the Raiders' offer in January (the Raiders deny extending a job offer, official or otherwise). The only rule was former Trojans quarterback Carson Palmer couldn't play, because that just wasn't fair.
"We just pick our targets," said Sarkisian, also a former college quarterback, as he stood on the USC practice field and gave the lay of the land. "Par 4, here we go. It might be that yellow thing in the corner. Crossbar, that box on the wall, whatever. Just throw it the whole way there.
"This thing can be a grind. We put in a lot of hours, but if you can find ways to have fun doing it, you can have a good time. I'm anxious to hear if he's playing Football Golf with the Raiders."
Not yet. Lane's the head coach now, which is what he's wanted to be all along.
In less than six months, Kiffin has replaced all but three assistants, overseen a draft that included the No. 1 overall pick, installed a new offense, worked with a defense that's new to him, traded wide receiver Randy Moss, added at least 35 new players to the roster and done weekly Q-and-A's for the team Web site.
He showed up saying games would be easy because practice is so hard. He proved it by working players at a frenetic pace during offseason workouts. Though players publicly praised Kiffin and the work ethic he demanded, at least one unidentified player was put off enough to complain to the players' union, which deemed Kiffin's workouts in violation of the offseason rules and canceled the Raiders' last week of weight training.
cont'd...
David White
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Lane Kiffin, 12, should have been tucked away in bed, dreaming glorious designs of being an NFL quarterback who throws winning touchdowns in the Super Bowl.
Only, come 9 o'clock on autumn Monday nights at the Kiffin household, Dad is just getting home from a day's work as an NFL assistant coach. As far as Monte Kiffin was concerned, there were still late-night snacks to munch, sleeping schedules to blow and a prime-time football game to dissect from the living room sofa.
"Mom's trying to put us to bed," said Lane, whose face is still boyish at age 32. "I remember when we were younger, we couldn't stay up that long. Our bedtime was at 9 and, shoot, 'Monday Night Football' was just getting started, so we'd get to stay up as younger kids and watch the first half with my dad.
"That was one of my favorite deals in our house, getting to stay up an extra hour and a half because, one, when you're young, you always want to stay up, and two, you got to watch the game with Dad and hear him talk it through."
Monte would sit on the edge of the couch next to Lane, scribbling football thoughts on a notepad and shouting out plays he thought the teams would run before they could snap the ball. Lane, too, took notes of the mental variety, studying his father's mannerisms and quizzing him about the why's and the how's because, frankly, Lane was never all that interested in the who's of it all unless his dad's team was playing.
While Lane's preteen peers were aspiring to be the next Joe Montana, Lane plotted to be Montana's coach or offensive coordinator. With that in mind, he forfeited his senior season of college football to initiate a coaching path that led him to become the youngest head coach in Oakland Raiders history, and the youngest hired since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970.
"Oh yes, I remember it well," said Monte, now a defensive coordinator with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. "We'd always get out a little early on Mondays so we could spend some time with our families. Lane would stay up and watch the game with me, and he was always asking questions, always very interested in the game itself. He wanted to know why coaches used timeouts when they did, why they ran certain plays, why a coach went for it on fourth down, all about clock management and different schemes.
"They weren't the normal kind of questions you'd expect from someone his age when you're watching a football game. You could tell then he was different in that way."
Lane never has been a head coach at any level. His loftiest title was co-offensive coordinator at USC, where he took the bulk of criticism when the Trojans failed to win national titles the past two college seasons -- think 4th-and-1 with Reggie Bush on the sideline in the BCS game against Texas.
Yet there Lane sat Jan. 23, dressed in Raiders black and white and sitting next to 76-year-old Al Davis. Just 31 years old, Lane had just been hired to replace 61-year-old coach Art Shell, the NFL Hall of Fame player who was fired after a 2-14 season. One week earlier, Lane wasn't even a candidate for the head coaching job.
If any of this comes as a surprise, well, you didn't spend Monday nights at the Kiffin residence back in the late '80s.
"It wasn't a feeling we had," said Heidi Guillot, his older sister. "We just knew that's what he was going to do. We never saw him ever becoming anything else. He was going to be a football coach, just like our dad."
Eventually, Lane thought he would, but first he wanted to play. He was the star quarterback at Jefferson High in Bloomington, Ind., leading the Jaguars to the state playoffs. He bagged a football scholarship to Fresno State, where quarterback Trent Dilfer had just become an NFL first-round draft pick.
Lane was strong-armed, mobile and never took a game-day snap. He was stuck behind future NFL quarterbacks Billy Volek and David Carr when Jeff Tedford, then the offensive coordinator, gave Lane a bright idea.
He could spend 1997, his senior year, as the scout team quarterback, or he could get a new day job as a volunteer graduate assistant. After all, Lane had spent most his time at Fresno State trying to talk his way into coaches meetings, and it's not like he was going to throw a single college pass.
No one remembers the day, but after talking it over with Monte -- who played one year in the CFL before plunging into coaching -- Lane agreed to call it a playing career. There was no hint he'd be an NFL head coach 10 years later. Fifteen, perhaps, but not 10.
"I tried to hang out at the office all the time," Lane said. "They'd have to kick me out of meetings because they'd start talking about other players and they couldn't let me hear all the things they'd say. I wanted in on all that.
"I wasn't going to play football the rest of my life, so to be able to get a jump-start on my career made sense to me."
Tedford had him break down film, conduct down and distance analysis, give input on the offensive game plan and whatever other menial chores seemed fit for the youngest coach on staff. Lane thanked the future Cal head coach by asking questions. Lots of questions. Just like he would with Monte in the family living room, only it seemed so much cuter when Lane was still a kid.
"He would stay there until midnight, watching film, talking football," Tedford said. "He was one of those guys who was always asking questions to the point he would kind of get on your nerves and you'd be, 'Hey, be quiet for a little bit. Stop talking for a minute, would ya?'
"I've known him since he was a freshman in college. I always had this picture of this giddy kid who's on your nerves all the time. Now, when I spend time with him, he's not that guy. He's matured. I've seen huge growth."
The bulk of that came at USC, where Kiffin rose from tight ends coach in 2001 to co-offensive coordinator in 2005-06. All the while, Trojans coach Pete Carroll taught Kiffin how to get players to respond to his know-it-all.
And yes, that was a bit of a chore. Lane grew up the son of a prominent NFL assistant. He was Montana's ball boy at the Pro Bowl. He ate training camp lunch with NFL players, sat in on NFL staff meetings and by age 25 was a defensive assistant coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He really did know it all, or at least a lot, and it showed.
"You could tell right away he was bright, that he'd been around football a long time," said Miami Dolphins defensive coordinator Dom Capers, who worked with Lane at Jacksonville in 2000. "He certainly was inquisitive. He did a lot of the leg work, hard work, had organization skills. He had a lot of good qualities."
Missing from the long list were strong people skills. Lane has been the youngest staffer at career stops with Fresno State, Colorado State, Jacksonville and USC. There, at Camp Carroll, is where Lane was told to ease off from his bad-cop routine with players.
If anyone could set Lane straight, it was going to be Carroll, who worked under Monte Kiffin at Arkansas and North Carolina State when Lane was a child. Carroll remembers running a 6-year-old Lane out of his office for butchering his gameplan with a hole puncher.
"He came on really strong, tried to counter for being young when he got here," Carroll said. "He tried really hard to be strong and tough. I worked with him with that. He's a very smart football coach and knows what he's doing. I didn't think that was something that was necessary for him, so we talked and formulated his style and approach.
"He's never going to be a guy who's looking to be a player's friend, but he's adjusted so well."
To help Lane unwind, Carroll introduced him to Football Golf, which is a hybrid of Frisbee Golf. Lane often played against Steve Sarkisian, the other USC co-offensive coordinator who turned down the Raiders' offer in January (the Raiders deny extending a job offer, official or otherwise). The only rule was former Trojans quarterback Carson Palmer couldn't play, because that just wasn't fair.
"We just pick our targets," said Sarkisian, also a former college quarterback, as he stood on the USC practice field and gave the lay of the land. "Par 4, here we go. It might be that yellow thing in the corner. Crossbar, that box on the wall, whatever. Just throw it the whole way there.
"This thing can be a grind. We put in a lot of hours, but if you can find ways to have fun doing it, you can have a good time. I'm anxious to hear if he's playing Football Golf with the Raiders."
Not yet. Lane's the head coach now, which is what he's wanted to be all along.
In less than six months, Kiffin has replaced all but three assistants, overseen a draft that included the No. 1 overall pick, installed a new offense, worked with a defense that's new to him, traded wide receiver Randy Moss, added at least 35 new players to the roster and done weekly Q-and-A's for the team Web site.
He showed up saying games would be easy because practice is so hard. He proved it by working players at a frenetic pace during offseason workouts. Though players publicly praised Kiffin and the work ethic he demanded, at least one unidentified player was put off enough to complain to the players' union, which deemed Kiffin's workouts in violation of the offseason rules and canceled the Raiders' last week of weight training.
cont'd...
