I have a hard time not seeing patterns in every-day life. Some say it's paranoia. I say it can't be paranoia. I'd have to be wrong for it to be paranoia.

The SoCal story, soon to reach it's denouement now that Haden has taken the AD job he's been working towards for at least the last several months, didn't all make sense to me until Bruins Nation reminded me that Pat Haden actually is responsible for the hiring of Lane Kiffin at Southern Cal.

Sources familiar with the USC Board of Trustees and the Trojans coaching situation told me today that USC Board of Trustee members Pat Haden and Ed Roski are leading the search for USC's next football coach.

We get the feeling that when Lane and Pat were meeting, leading up to Lane's hiring, Lane wasn't aware of any suckers at the table.

This all seems pretty obvious today, but let's just recap what's happened at our biggest rival's athletic department.

1. The house of cards starts to tumble at Southern Cal, as the NCAA launches an investigation into multiple rules infractions by the SoCal athletic department.
2. Pete Carroll abandons a ship. Given that he was the captain, he could see where this thing was going long before anyone else along for the ride.
3. Meanwhile, Pat Haden, a board of trustees member at SoCal, is as plugged into the entire story as he could possibly be. He's got all the inside scoop and the ability to maintain a 3rd-party distance from the plot.
4. Also meanwhile, USC AD Mike Garrett's luck, that seemed never-ending just a few years ago after Pete Carroll stumbled into his office looking for the little boys' room, has run out. A s#&t storm is brewing, and Mike's the only one left without an umbrella.
5. The already in-trouble AD, Garret, gives over the "lead" for the search for Carroll's replacement to 2 highly respected members of the USC family - 1 just happens to also be SC's "Golden Boy" from bygone days of gold-tinted history. And Garrett was probably thrilled to do so. It gave Garrett coverage, to a point, because he wasn't leading the search. At least some fault would get spread around.
6. Haden's bright enough to know they'll never draw in a truly competent HC due to the impending NCAA doom, so he sets his sights for the easiest patsy available. At this point, he also knows Garret's gone, and the next AD will be looked to to "clean up" the SC program. At this point, Haden knows he could be that cleaner-upper. Sure, Haden's already got a sweet gig calling a few games a year at ND as his side project, and he's raking in the dough as a partner in his investment firm, but he sees by now an excellent opportunity to build a greater legacy at his alma mater. He's sees the chance at savior-ship. And he takes it.
7. Lane Kiffin is named the new Head Coach of the SoCal football program. Everyone wonders how stupid both Kiffin and SC could be to make this happen. Haden just sits back and lets the plan unfold.
8. At this point, if Garrett's still got any semblance of a leg to stand on, it's whipped away in brutal fashion by the kung-fu masters of the NCAA infraction committee. SC doesn't quite get the death penalty, but they're so close to it they can dip their toes in just to get a sense of those frigid waters. Garrett, already unconscious after the hiring of Kiffin, is now pronounced dead-man walking.
9. Now the new president at SC takes an active role, not allowing Garrett to "retire" so much as booting him out the door, right along with Reggie Bush's Heisman and Pete Carroll's legacy. Actions that Haden, a BOT member, probably could have guessed at, given the info he had available.
10. And at the same time, Haden, the most active BOT member in the football program, a well-respected business man, and a well-known public figure in the college football world thanks both to his playing days and his work on NBC, gets named the new AD at SC. Some think it's a step down for a guy like him, but some people have no sense of legacy.

All pretty obvious, if you just consider the timeline a bit and infer things here and there. Speculative, to be sure, but I also speculate every day that the sun's gonna come up the next day too. And frankly, it's not really all that "brilliant." It's just smart. Haden was playing the game a few moves ahead of everyone else involved while everyone else involved was trying to figure out how to move the pieces to stay alive for the next turn.

So what's next? I figure it'll go something like this:

1. SC suffers the full brunt of the initial punishment handed to them by the NCAA. The recent, multiple investigations into other programs over improper activity between players and agents makes it clear that the NCAA is pretty sick of the state of things right now, and has decided to wield a big ole' whippin' stick until things at least look like the NCAA wants them to look.
2. Kiffin, already doomed to mediocrity due to his apparent congenital defects, is the obvious patsy. He's in an unfortunate position of being both "fresh blood" and "a connection to a sullied past." Kicking him to the curb will be the final bit of work needed to decouple SC from the NCAA infraction-heavy Carroll era. The firing of Kiffin will be easy because he'll be so bad. Any decent coach would be tough to fire because of those NCAA punishments. And the NCAA punishments will be tough enough that, had Haden lead the search team to find a truly strong HC, then firing the guy would be damned near impossible. With Kiffin, you're nearly even-money that he'll just go ahead and give you a reason to fire him for cause and save you the buy-out.
3. The firing of Kiffin will be heralded by fans (some a bit reluctant about Haden's hiring) as a "strong and decisive" action by the relatively new AD, and will be compared favorably to Haden's fumbling, bumbling, blind-squirrel of a predecessor.

I just hope Haden doesn't manage to hire "the next Saban" at SC after Kiffin.

Patrick, to his credit, did not duck from asking Carroll several pointed questions about the NCAA's investigation into alleged NCAA rules violations at Carroll's last employer, The University of Southern California. Carroll said he would be "surprised" if the NCAA punished USC.

...

On The Dan Patrick Show, Pete Carroll said there was much he did not know surrounding what went on at USC that led to the allegations. Carroll was head football coach at USC where he won two national championships, and several Pac-10 Championships. Carroll said "it's hard to control" every aspect of an athletic program.

Sure sounds a lot like Pete's trying to claim that he was, essentially, naive. As to what happened at SC while he was at the helm, he had little idea of what was going on, and as to what's coming for SC, he's saying he has no idea what will happen.

Ah, plausible deniability, you start to sound so much like lack of institutional control the more you are claimed.

I will say this: If SC is guilty of major violations, and if they are hammered by the NCAA, I'll be quite disappointed. It'll be a shame to see our rival become a hobbled shell rather than the benchmark it's been in college football for so long. Still, if they're guilty, and the hammer is not laid down upon their heads with the full brunt of righteous indignation, I'll be more disappointed still.

Follow that link above, vote for Lane Kiffin for Esquire's sexiest woman alive. She's already beating 1-seed golfer Natalie Gulbis by a wide margin.

Doitdoitdoitdoitdoit!

Gotta wonder, is the creator of this poll a ND, UCLA, or Tennessee alum? We're thinking they're a Vol.

But on Monday morning in a text-message to news media outlets, his father, Sean, said that his son’s ACT scores, which he received last Friday, made him academically eligible. With that news, he said, his son would sign with U.S.C. on Thursday.

Here endeth the drama. Unless, you know, he doesn't actually sign. Again.

The hearings were secret, and participants were required not to reveal anything to the news media. A decision will be made only after hours of conference calls between the members of the committee on infractions.

But there were signs from the hearings that make it highly improbable U.S.C. football will leave this multimillion-dollar, four-year investigation with a wrist slap. The first and most glaring hint came from a hotel bellhop, who practically grunted while pushing an industrial luggage cart full of documents out of the meeting room. There were seven boxes on the cart, including a six-inch-thick binder labeled U.S.C. Response Volume 1.

Tom Yeager, a former chairman of the infractions committee, noted in a telephone interview last week that the inside joke among committee members was whether or not a case was a “one-box” case or a “two-box” case.

When that joke was relayed to David Price, the N.C.A.A.’s vice president for enforcement services, he said that U.S.C.’s case in front of the N.C.A.A. was the longest in his 11 years with the committee.

Yes, yes, go on...

Price also said that most times the committee met, it heard cases from several universities, and this one was dedicated to U.S.C. In contrast, Alabama’s case before the N.C.A.A. in 2002, which resulted in five years of probation, a two-year postseason ban and crippling scholarship reductions, took two days.

Fascinating! Only two days, you say?

Chow is returning to Southern Cal. We'll wait to see if Reggie Bush is returning too.

USC football Coach Pete Carroll employed a former NFL tactician last season to help with the team's punting and kicking game, an arrangement that may have violated NCAA rules that prohibit consultants from coaching, The Times has learned.

Carroll's action could widen a continuing investigation by the NCAA, the governing body of major college sports, which has been looking at USC football for more than three years and the school's basketball program for the last year. The probe has been examining specific allegations of improper payments to two players as well as the broader question of whether USC has lost "institutional control" of its athletics department.

Note that it seems to be the consensus of "experts" that such an infraction would fall into the "major" bucket rather than the "minor" bucket. But also note that this infraction is just loop-holey enough that the NCAA can go on ignoring it like it ignores anything else that SoCal might do.

The bylaws say teams may retain temporary consultants "to provide in-service training for the coaching staff, but no interaction with student-athletes is permitted."

So I'm pretty sure all of this will result in little more than blogger fodder. So is Bruins Nation, who can't even muster up much righteous incredulity for the news, so common-place these ignored infractions by SoCal have become.

Well we are not sure what else the NCAA is looking at this point. Apparently they have been "looking" for years and to date we have heard nothing. And no one here is going to be holding their breath. Pom Pom and his renegades will continue to operate whatever way they want because clearly NCAA rules don't apply to them.

Right now the way these stories keep unfolding from the "most scandalous athletic program of this era" the term lack of institutional control applies more appropriately to a hapless, pathetic, impotent NCAA than the rogue program run by Mike Garrett and Chetey Petey.

But again, do understand that this is a serious accusation and would be a serious infraction. Notre Dame fans have spent many a conversation trying to figure out how ND head coaches, past and present, can "carry dead weight" in the form of coaches who offer less contribution than their counterparts. If this accusation is true, Pete decided nobody on his official, legal staff had the proper acumen to coach up his special teams and decided to bring on an illegal, hired-gun to do the work. It's a very real competitive advantage.

UPDATE: Conquest Chronicles shares their thoughts. Overall it's a fair-ish piece from the resident SC blogger, but he gets one piece wrong while trying to rationalize.

But what was Rodriguez compensated? Rodriguez states in the piece that his time consulting with Carroll was minimal. Didn't Charlie Weis have Bill Belechick (sic) consult with him on some ND football issues?

What he CC failed to note is that Weis consulted Belichick during the off-season, and it never involved Belichick monitoring practices or games during the season.

Embroiled in controversy, Southern California coach Tim Floyd resigned on Tuesday.

The Clarion Ledger of Jackson, Miss., first reported the resignation. The newspaper obtained the letter that the coach submitted to USC athletic director Mike Garrett. It read:

"As of 1 p.m. today, I am resigning as head basketball coach at the University of Southern California. I deeply appreciate the opportunity afforded me by the university, as well as the chance to know and work with some of the finest young men in college athletics. Unfortunately, I no longer feel I can offer the level of enthusiasm to my duties that is deserved by the university, my coaching staff, my players, their families, and the supporters of Southern Cal. I always promised my self and my family that if I ever felt I could no longer give my full enthusiasm to a job, that I should leave it to others who could. I intend to contact my coaching staff and my players in coming days and weeks to tell them how much each of them means to me. I wish the best to USC and to my successor."

And while we're using our Jump To Conclusions Mat here, we seem to be unable to land on any spot other than, "He's resigning because he's being sacrificed to the NCAA gods in hopes of a reprieve over the investigation into a possible lack of 'institutional control' at Southern Cal." Granted, with that long a description, that conclusion takes up a lot of real estate on the mat, but there it is. And the notion of a "lack of institutional control" is a very serious one when it comes to the NCAA. It's the same term that was used by the NCAA when SMU was given the death penalty in the '80s, not that we think the NCAA would ever hit a football program with that penalty in this day and age.

And that's what leads us to our next bit of complete speculation: Pete Carroll may jump ship in the next year as well. Yes, it would depend on at least several 'ifs.' For example, Carroll may well stick around if the NCAA decides only to levy penalties against the SoCal basketball team. He may stick around if any penalties doled out in his direction amount to a slap on the wrist. And he may stick around if he doesn't have better options for his career. But we can't help but wonder (and worry) if ND faces the possibility of only beating Carroll once during his tenure at Southern Cal.

Should the Irish lose to SoCal this season, that'll mark 2920 days, or just days away from being 8 years. 8 years is a long freaking time. So long, in fact, that much of the rosters of the Irish and the Trojans will likely not be able to recall the last time the Irish defeated SoCal. So might the Trojans take the Irish for granted this season, and manage to experience their annual "WTF loss" against the Irish, even if the Irish aren't a good team in 2009? As Matt also pointed out this week, that's not really likely.

Whether Notre Dame is very good, mediocre or lousy could impact the Pac-10 race and bowl picture given that the Irish play 40% of the teams (Washington, Washington State, Stanford and, of course, USC).

The Trojans need the Irish to be a quality team this year, and they need to beat the Irish in order to make a run at the BCS championship. Whether the kids on the teams remember much history or not, it looks like the Trojans will be pretty well focused on ND in October.

Of course, if these kids do know their rivalry history, they might also remember that there was a time when the Trojans couldn't beat the Irish, even when the Irish were coached by Faust: October 22, 1983 to November 30, 1996. For you Michigan (sucks!) fans who make it to this point in the post, that's 13 years, 1 month, and 9 days or 4789 days. There was a time in this rivalry where one side would find it absolutely shocking to lose to the other. That time is not now.