How USC Fires the "Miley Cyrus of College Football" [View all]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/sports/ncaafootball/usc-fires-its-football-coach.html

Southern California Calls Kiffin Off the Team Bus and Then Fires Him
By BILLY WITZ
Published: September 29, 2013

LOS ANGELES — Two weeks ago, when Southern California Athletic Director Pat Haden was asked about the status of his embattled football coach, Lane Kiffin, he said, “We support all our coaches 100 percent until they’re not our coaches.”

So Kiffin was the Trojans’ coach Saturday night during a 62-41 drubbing at Arizona State. Until early Sunday morning, when he was not.

Haden fired Kiffin hours after the game, when the team arrived back in Los Angeles at 3 a.m. Kiffin was called off the team bus that was preparing to head to campus from Los Angeles International Airport and taken to a small room inside the terminal where Haden told Kiffin he was being dismissed.

“At the end of the day, it became a gut feeling that we weren’t making the progress that I thought we should be making,” Haden said. “It’s never the perfect time, but I thought this was the right time. Our history has been great, and we need to be great again.”