Sport Watch

Filed under: NCAA Football

LOS ANGELES — The Bart Simpson analogy works. Or if you’re older than 50, try Eddie Haskell, the smart ass from “Leave it to Beaver.” As the most loathed person in football, Lane Kiffin is the sort of problem child whom we’d love to grab by the earlobes and shake for an hour, disgusted that he keeps ignoring common rules and protocol as if he’s floating above all his peers.

I used to think he was a goofy nitwit who didn’t get it. But with every new entry to his ever-expanding trail of trouble, it’s clear Kiffin has a superiority complex that enables an arrogant and reckless thought process. If he wants a recruit, he sends a hot coed. If he thinks another coach is cheating, he says so, even if he’s dead wrong. If he has a bright idea, he doesn’t consult the NCAA rule book to see if he’s committing a violation. And if he chooses to raid an NFL team for an assistant coach, he won’t bother to at least call for permission.

The latest misstep might spell doom, the beginning of the end of Kiffin’s coaching career at USC. Only days after the university finally launched a cleansing process from its Hollywood U. days — returning its replica of Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy, purging all mentions and traces of Bush and fellow probation rogue O.J. Mayo, replacing renegade athletic director Mike Garrett with straight arrow Pat Haden and pledging a clean, compliant way of life — Kiffin threw yet another greasy knuckleball into the new mission. He invaded the house of the Tennessee Titans, just months after his controversial and abrupt departure from the University of Tennessee, and hired running backs coach Kennedy Pola as his offensive coordinator. The problem: Kiffin, typical of his modus operandi, didn’t contact Titans coach Jeff Fisher and ask to speak with Pola. Never mind that Fisher played at USC and cares deeply about the school. Never mind that he’s one of the most respected men in the sport.

Kiffin crossed him anyway. “I am very disappointed in Lane Kiffin’s approach to this,” Fisher said. “Typically speaking, when coaches are interested in hiring or discussing potential employment from coaches on respective staffs, there is a courtesy call made from the head coach or athletic director indicating an interest in talking to the assistant. So I am very disappointed in the lack of professionalism on behalf of Lane, to call me and leave me a voice mail after Kennedy had informed me he had taken the job. It is just a lack of professionalism.”

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Filed under: MLS, English Premier League, Los Angeles Galaxy, United States

HARRISON, N.J. (AP) — Major League Soccer plans to keep Landon Donovan.

MLS commissioner Don Garber said the league has no intention of accepting transfer offers for the Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder.

“He’s become a real soccer hero,” Garber said Thursday after the news conference to announce French star Thierry Henry’s signing with the New York Red Bulls. “MLS needs soccer heroes, and we have a great American soccer hero playing for us in LA, holding the torch for the sport in our country, and that’s very important. I don’t believe that it’s something we can do without.”

Donovan was the best U.S. player at the World Cup, scoring three goals to become the American career leader with five. He agreed in December to a four-year contract with MLS that pays him a base salary this year of .05 million.

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Fanhouse Soccer

Filed under: NBA

LOS ANGELES — So all the celebrities and the wannabes and the mere California common folk can stop dry-heaving for a day or two. Game 5 was over before the sun fell over the ocean, meaning Team Hollywood will not expire later this week in Oklahoma, incongruous as that imagery is. Turns out the best entertainment value Tuesday night was Hugh Hefner, sandwiched between two bimbos inside a Staples Center suite, laughing as he received pecks on the cheeks during the Kiss Cam segment.

This on the same day when he paid almost a million bucks to help save the HOLLYWOOD sign from being devoured by urban sprawl. No jokes just yet, please, about Hef having more virility than the Lakers.

Yet we’d be foolish not to wonder, even if they go on to survive the Thunder, if they’re capable of winning another NBA championship in seven weeks when a battered Kobe Bryant barely can get through a day. This is a man with a right knee that swells more than George Clooney’s ego, limiting how high he can lift on simple jumpers. This is a man whose broken right index finger finally has healed, or so he says, but who still wears a splint on the digit because arthritis is in a joint. This is a man whose left ankle is in pain and who probably isn’t telling us about numerous other aches. This is a man who is 31 on his driver’s license but at least 35 in basketball years, having played more than 45,000 minutes over 14 seasons — think about that — when counting postseasons and the Olympics.

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