The First Annual USC Assistant Showdown is Tomorrow

As we've been discussing this week, the Washington game presents USC's first real challenge of the year. And it also represents the first of what might be many meetings between Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian, who were both assistants under Pete Carroll. Their relationship is one of friendship and rivalry.

Sark and Kiff were both young offensive assistants under Norm Chow during Troy's rise in the early 2000's, Sarkisian coaching quarterbacks and Kiffin coaching wide receivers. When the Carroll-Chow rift sent Norm Chow to the NFL, Sarkisian and Kiffin both wanted Chow's old job, and Kiffin won it. Kiffin became the Offensive Coordinator, and Sarkisian became the Assistant Head Coach and maintained responsibility for the quarterbacks. In 2007, Kiffin was hired away by Al Davis to become the youngest head coach in NFL history to have a disastrous tenure.

As Kiffin left, Sarkisian became the new offensive coordinator, leading the Trojans to two straight Rose Bowl victories. During this time, Kiffin was quickly fired from his head coaching position at Oakland. In 2009, Sarkisian and Kiffin both got their first college head coaching gigs - Sarkisian was hired by Washington to replace the incompetent Ty Willingham, and Kiffin was hired by Tennessee to replace the incontinent Phil Fulmer.

At Washington, Sarkisian's team showed immediate improvement, beating USC in Seattle and looking like a top-tier Pac-10 squad until Jake Locker went down with an injury. On Rocky Top, Kiffin displayed brashness and braggadocio, but ended the year with substantially more recruiting violations than wins.

Of course, everybody knows how Pete Carroll left for Seattle, how Pat Haden hired Kiffin, and how Kiffin and Sarkisian are now going to be scheming from opposite sidelines on Saturday. We can look forward to seeing this rivalry grow and develop over time, or at least until 2012, when Kiffin leaves USC for an NFL job after leading the Trojans to consecutive middling seasons.