Southern Cal set itself up for Sarkisian debacle
It was, in retrospect, the most intellectually dishonest apology Steve Sarkisian could have mustered. He wasn’t being fair with himself or his bosses. His bosses weren’t being fair with Southern California’s football players and fans.
So here we are, five games into the season, with Sarkisian on an indefinite leave of absence after not being healthy enough to run Sunday practice and one of the most storied college football programs of the last half-century in the middle of yet another mess, mostly of its own making. And now the questions about who will get the Trojans out of it and how they’ll do it become exponentially more complicated.
The biggest takeaway, of course, is that Sarkisian hopefully has hit rock bottom and can get help to fight what appears to be a problem with alcohol. But it shouldn’t have come to this, not on Oct. 11 in the middle of a pressure-packed season that has un- doubtedly exacerbated whatever demons Sarkisian has to deal with.
Go back to Aug. 25 and watch his apology-laden news conference after the revelation Sarkisian had been intoxicated at the program’s Salute to Troy booster event. According to multiple people who were there, Sarkisian was so blatantly drunk that athletics director Pat Haden had to pull him off the stage in the middle of a speech.
Even at the time, most of what Sarkisian said in an attempt to explain it away — essentially, that
he mixed medication with alcohol — made little sense. Now, looking back on it, the idea USC allowed him to continue coaching is insane.
Instead of making Sarkisian take a hard look at himself and go immediately to rehab, Haden let him off the hook. Essentially, the plan to make this all better was to go to undisclosed treatment and swear off alcohol for the rest of the season. Oh, and he did some push-ups before practice to mimic the punishment one of his players would get in the same situation.
“No, I don’t believe so,” Sarkisian responded when asked point-blank if he had an alcohol problem. “But through Pat and through the university I’m going to find that out. I’m going to go to treatment.
“I’m going to deal with it. In the meantime, I’m going to be the head football coach here, and I believe I can be. I don’t know what else more there is to say about that.” Well, there’s plenty to say now. Look, a lot of people with alcohol problems deny they have al- cohol problems, even in the face of significant evidence otherwise. But there was enough innuendo about Sarkisian’s partying when he was at Washington or the USC event to merit Haden calling a timeout and putting Sarkisian into serious rehab right away.
Any coaching job, particularly one of this magnitude, is a highpressure environment. Wins are relief; losses are devastating. It is also well-known that Sarkisian is going through a divorce, which could certainly exacerbate any impulse toward addiction.
This was not a healthy mix of elements for Sarkisian to attempt to work in, and the fact it has now blown up in the middle of the season falls squarely on Haden’s shoulders.
It also makes it much more difficult for USC to do what now needs to be done.
Sarkisian could have been removed from this job purely for football reasons. On top of that, it is hard to imagine, after he reportedly showed up to work in no shape to conduct a practice, how he can come back to the sidelines at any point and portray himself as the public face of the university and a credible steward of USC’s multimillion-dollar enterprise.
Yet how can USC fire Sarkisian for having an alcohol problem — a legitimate disease — when school officials waited two months too long to make him own up to it and seek help for it?
That doesn’t seem fair, and it might be illegal.
That’s the mess the Trojans find themselves in, and it all stems from Haden’s decision in August to let him keep coaching rather than mandate that he take the year off to seek treatment and come back healthy in 2016.
Haden is a legend at USC, but his leadership of the athletics department has been questionable at best, starting with the decision to retain Lane Kiffin in 2013, then firing him five games into the season.
At that point, Haden could have gone after pretty much any coach this side of Nick Saban and Urban Meyer. From the very beginning, though, he targeted Sarkisian despite knowing full well that his teams perennially underachieved at Washington and that his personal behavior had been questioned.
It was the wrong hire at the time, and it has only gotten worse. It also might explain why Haden gave him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t need to go to rehab after Salute to Troy, a decision that ultimately did more harm than good.
At some point in the next few months, somebody will have to make a big call on whether Sarkisian can come back in 2016, and, if not, who the school hires to make USC football great again. Given the track record, it shouldn’t be Haden.