Written by Doug Smock at Charleston Gazette Mail
Conference USA football’s East Division has gotten a lot more interesting with the entrance of Lane Kiffin and Butch Davis at the two south Florida schools.
The Associated Press, citing a person with direct knowledge of the situation, reported that Florida Atlantic has reached agreement with the 41-year-old Kiffin to be the fifth head coach in the Owls’ history. Reports over the weekend indicated contract talks bogged down.
Kiffin has been called a “football savant” whose recruiting and Xs-and-Os skills are widely praised. As offensive coordinator at Alabama, he has been good enough to help direct the Crimson Tide to its second College Football Playoff in a row.
He also has been called immature, and none of his three head-coaching jobs have ended well. At Southern California in 2013, he was pulled off the team bus at Los Angeles International Airport and informed of his firing. Since then, he has worked for Nick Saban at Alabama.
He also has been fired from the Oakland Raiders and left Tennessee fans angry when he left Knoxville for the Southern Cal job.
Kiffin was rumored for the higher-profile job at Houston, replacing coach Tom Herman. But the school’s board of regents chairman told ESPN that Kiffin wasn’t that close to landing the job, and wasn’t a “safe hire.”
After three 3-9 seasons under Charlie Partridge, FAU was ready to roll the dice. And now, Kiffin joins Florida International’s Davis as big-name coaches in the Sunshine State’s two youngest major-college programs.
It’s a homecoming for the 65-year-old Davis, who coached at the University of Miami for five years as a defensive line coach under Jimmy Johnson (1984-88) and six (1995-2000) as head coach.
He was hired during FIU’s season, something the school could do because (a) it fired coach Ron Turner after an 0-4 start and (b) Davis wasn’t doing anything pressing. Davis had been out of coaching since his firing at North Carolina in 2010.
Davis was fired by UNC chancellor Holden Thorp amid an academic schedule that resulted in all Tar Heel victories in 2008 and 2009 being vacated. He worked in 2012 and 2013 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an adviser to Greg Schiano, his defensive coordinator at Miami.
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