Check this out -- today's USA Today has not one, but two stories with USC football connections, and neither one makes the subject look good.
First, we have the Pete Carroll-coached Seattle Seahawks admitting that the team broke an NFL rule by having new signee Terrell Owens in pads on his first practice day. Apparently, that's not allowed until day 4. Ah, well, that does sound like kind of nitpicky rule.
So on to the other story. Here we see that current USC football coach Lane Kiffin said publicly that he would not vote for USC #1 in the first preseason poll, but in fact, he did. I wouldn't go so far as to say that he lied, since the exact quote is "I would not vote USC no. 1, I can tell you that." That is, he didn't say, "I didn't vote USC no. 1." You could argue in a Clintonesque way that the use of the conditional "would" denotes a hypothetical situation, which does support his contention that he was speaking as if he were not the USC coach.
Still, he should have stopped there, instead of continuing on with further explanation:
When everybody has the same record, I can't go into a meeting with our players and have them say, 'You put that team and that team ahead of us.' That's why I did that.
As the USA Today story noted, how would the players find out? The vote is secret, unless you publicly lie, in which case the paper will burn your confidentiality.
well, i just hope the situation will improve in the future
i don't what to give up on them
Posted by: Donna J. | September 07, 2012 at 04:17 AM
You could argue in a Clintonesque way that the use of the conditional "would" denotes a hypothetical situation, which does support his contention that he was speaking as if he were not the USC coach.
Posted by: iPhone 3GS | January 08, 2013 at 02:16 AM