1975 – Volume I: The University of Hawaii Rainbows

It is possible, you haven’t noticed that during this year’s off season, the USC’s football team got a new head coach. Maybe you were too preoccupied with the ending of “Lost,” saving loads of people in Haiti or like the poor Chilean miners, you were stuck in a mine for the better part of the last six months, any or all of which prevented you from noticing the untimely departure of Pete Carroll and the unlikely arrival of new head coach Lane Kiffin.

So now that you are up to speed, the horror of watching Lane Kiffin coach the Trojans won’t seem as jarring tonight in their first game against the Hawaii Rainbows (as an aside, I wish there was a legitmate way to include a reference to the double rainbow guy). That being said, I would like to forever refer to Lane Kiffin as the Captain of the Titanic whose real name was Edward John Smith but as no one would ever get that reference, the Captain of the Titanic will suffice. And if you can’t figure out why the Captain of the Titanic is a fitting nick name for Lane Kiffin, well than my weekly blog poking fun of him corresponding with each USC game, probably won’t be that interesting to you anyways.

There are lots of reasons why hiring the Captain of the Titanic was an ill-fated plan – his losing record as a head coach in both the Pros and most recently at the University of Tennessee, pending law suit(s) against him, a season’s worth of vacated wins or his brash and arrogant demeanor – to name a few, but I would like to focus on the Captain of the Titanic’s age. When the Captain of the Titanic took the head coach job at the Tennessee, he was 33 years old making him at the time the youngest active head coach in Division I Football. Now at a mature 35, he is no longer the youngest, Portland State’s 34 year-old Nigel Burton holds that distinction – but his youthfulness remains another category where he is close to the bottom.

This year, instead of writing about things I own that are actually older than USC’s quarterback, Matt Barkley, I will write about notable events that occurred in 1975 – the year the Captain of the Titanic was born. Most of the events I share (and I don’t have a very developed list, so if you have suggestions, I am all ears) will have relevance to USC and/or LA Sports but not necessarily. How could I not at some point talk about the end of the Vietnam War **spoiler alert**?

And as this is just an introduction, there will be no 1975 event to share this go around as I have already written way too much for my three readers to trudge through. One final thought about tonight’s game – Thursday night USC games make me nervous, we all remember the last Thursday night game that ended in a hot mess: September 25, 2008 – need I say more?