Flailing USC needs Chip Kelly as its coach, not Steve Sarkisian

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY Sports

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You know it when you see it.

And what you see at Southern California nearing the halfway point of the 2015 season is the failed regime of Steve Sarkisian and a program desperately in need of Chip Kelly.

No. 17 USC lost to unranked Washington on Thursday night, 17-12. It stands as the most inexplicable loss of the Sarkisian era, though there are many to choose from in his 18 games as the Trojans’ head coach.

It’s over. At least it should be.

Picked to win the Pac-12 Conference and stocked with talent that should go 10-2 by accident, Sarkisian has proven himself to be incapable of this job, on and off the field.

Whether USC has the stomach to make a coaching change right now — in Sarkisian’s second season — is unclear. He was the choice all along of athletics director Pat Haden, and to concede defeat now would essentially equal an admission that Haden, the USC legend, has failed in his primary responsibility as steward of the Trojans’ great football tradition.

But you know it when you see it.

And there are no excuses for the Trojans to be this inconsistent, this poorly coached and this intent on squandering a roster loaded with individual stars.

At least Lane Kiffin had a 10-win season at USC before things went bad. What does Sarkisian have?

Washington, a team that lost its best defensive players from last season and wasn’t supposed to even go 5-7 according to Las Vegas oddsmakers, punked the Trojans in LA. The Huskies’ defense won the line of scrimmage, and despite significant offensive limitations, made enough plays on both sides of the ball to grind out a close fourth quarter.

USC started slow and played soft up front in a must-win game. That’s on Sark.

It was as thoroughly a coaching win by Washington’s Chris Petersen as you’ll ever see. And at 3-2 with a pair of home losses, USC’s season is essentially over relative to the expectations placed on this team when it was selected as the preseason Pac 12 favorite.

This is what USC signed up for. Though Sarkisian gets credit for pulling Washington from 0-12 to relevance, his teams were notorious for playing well one week, then no-showing the next.

Yet USC hired him anyway, banking that his ability to recruit would be so overwhelming that it would mask any shortcomings. Nothing has changed, and Sarkisian didn't help himself before this season when Haden had to pull him off the stage at the "Salute To Troy" preseason event due to drunken behavior in front of boosters.

It was up to Sarkisian this year to prove that he was a good enough coach to overcome mistakes. He isn't.

The answer for USC is easy.

Though Chip Kelly is reportedly committed to seeing it through with the Philadelphia Eagles, there would not be a more perfect marriage between team and coach than jumping to the Trojans.

If Kelly could dominate the Pac-12 at Oregon, there is no ceiling on what he could do at USC.

The NCAA penalties that would have made it difficult for a college to hire him are over. When Kelly inevitably returns to the college game, he will instantly have the credibility and cachet to recruit at an even higher level than he ever achieved at Oregon. With the amount of skill in Southern California, USC would instantly return to its rightful place as the most feared program west of Texas.

And given a roster loaded with talented players starving for coaching competence, it wouldn’t take long for USC to get back in national title contention.

Thursday showed that this USC season is all but over. The Trojans’ administration needs to dedicate the rest of it to convincing Kelly that he'd be better off at a true college blueblood than floundering in the NFL.

Kelly is a misfit with the Eagles. He'd be a perfect fit at USC.

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