Kiffin watch: the sphincter tightens.

Is the bloom already wearing off the rose a wee bit for Junior?  Say it ain’t so (h/t The Wiz of Odds).

… In addition to the Henderson saga, USC found itself in the position of accusing five schools of violations.  Freshman running back Dillon Baxter told the school’s compliance director that Florida, Washington, Oregon, Fresno State and Alabama all contacted him illegally in the wake of the school’s sanctions being imposed.  Since then, athletic director Mike Garrett sent letters to the aforementioned schools to apologize for the false accusations.  The incident had Garrett and the USC brass upset over the embarrassment it caused the program, especially because Lane is the one who pushed for the accusations to be publicized.

People within the program are beginning to see how much different Kiffin is from his predecessor, Pete Carroll.  While each coach has loads of confidence, Carroll is much more personable than Lane.  There has been a rash of bad news for the USC program over the past several months and Kiffin knows the only way to gain the confidence of the fans is by winning.  He’s feeling the pressure so much that he wanted to recruit linebacker Joshua Shirley, who was recently released from his letter of intent by UCLA because of a June arrest for stealing a bag on campus.  Shirley had picked UCLA over USC on signing day, but Kiffin was shot down by the school in his efforts to re-recruit Shirley because they did not want to suffer the public relations hit of recruiting a player kicked off UCLA’s team for an arrest.

The Trojans don’t open up until September 2nd at Hawaii, but the pressure is already mounting inside Heritage Hall.

Hey, give the folks at Southern Cal a little credit here.  Kiffin had Knoxville snowed until the day he walked out the door.

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