Earlier we noted an avalanche of stories about this Saturday’s college football game between USC and UW, which features a match-up of former USC assistant coaches in UW head coach Steve Sarkisian and USC head coach Lane Kiffin.
Gregg Bell of GoHuskies.com explores the relationship a bit more.
“Yeah, we talk. We text. It’s a good friendship. It’s one that keeps us healthy in the profession,” Sarkisian, Washington’s coach, says of Kiffin, the head man at USC. “So much of this profession is keeping things in close and in tight and you can’t share with anybody. (I enjoy) the ability to share with Lane different thoughts, different ideas, different frustrations that maybe you don’t want everyone else to see but you can bounce it off him and he understands.”
They’ve been programmed in the same way, by the same mentor in former coach Pete Carroll. They first worked together in 2001, Sarkisian as a Trojans graduate assistant and Kiffin in his first full-time job as a tight ends coach for Carroll. By 2005, they were sharing play-calling duties for USC’s offense, and the Trojans led the nation by averaging 580 yards per game that season.
Carroll calls them “great friends and comrades as they grew up in the system.”