The second tenure of Kliff Kingsbury as a USC football assistant coach will be different from the first one in an obvious, central way: This time, Kingsbury will be part of the USC coaching staff during a whole college football season. Kingsbury will actually be on staff when USC plays a game.
Neither detail applied to Kingsbury’s first go-round with the Trojans.
Remember George O’Leary’s run as the head coach at Notre Dame? What about Manny Diaz’s career as the head coach of the Temple Owls? Those are two examples of coaches who did sign a contract as new employees of a school, only to leave days later — O’Leary due to scandal, Diaz due to the surprising opening at Miami after Mark Richt retired.
Kingsbury fits into that same category at USC: a coach who was an employee for a very short time, and never for a single gameday at the school.
Kingsbury was hired by USC as the football program’s new offensive coordinator when Clay Helton was still head coach and Lynn Swann was athletic director in December of 2018. Weeks later, he bolted for the open head coaching job with the Arizona Cardinals. We never got to see what a Kingsbury offense would look like at USC, but he was an employee for a brief while.
Now we get to see Kingsbury as a genuine influence on a USC offense which has loads of talent and potential.
We can safely say this situation is a lot better than the previous one.
We can also say there won’t be an NFL job for Kingsbury to chase this time.
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