Will Trojan nation be happy with Sarkisian as their new football coach? (Creative Commons)

Two days after USC lost to crosstown rival UCLA 35-14, athletic director Pat Haden has hired Washington coach Steve Sarkisian as the new Trojan head coach. Sarkisian has compiled a 34-29 record at Washington over five years, and has never won more than five Pac-12 games in a single season. 

Sarkisian was an offensive assistant for USC in 2001, and was promoted to quarterbacks coach in 2002 and 2003 before moving on to the Oakland Raiders. He was part of an offensive staff under Pete Carroll that included Norm Chow as offensive coordinator and former USC coach Lane Kiffin. Sarkisian later became USC's offensive coordinator for the 2007 and 2008 seasons after Kiffin left to take the Raiders head coaching position, which Sarkisian also interviewed for.

Washington defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox reportedly will be jumping ship with Sarkisian as well. Wilcox has served as defensive coordinator for Boise State, Tennessee and Washington over the past decade. It will be intriguing to see if Clancy Pendergast, after a great first season as USC's defensive coordinator, will stick around on the staff.

A big question that will be circling around the minds of Trojan nation is whether or not Ed Orgeron will return. While Orgeron did lose two rivalry games against Notre Dame and UCLA as USC's interim head coach, he also managed to win six Pac-12 games, a number that Sarkisian has never reached. Washington's Tosh Lupoi, who is their defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator, is also rumored to be coming to USC, which means that Orgeron would most likely be leaving USC after his interim campaign. 

MORE: Coach O Loses Game, Momentum In USC Loss To UCLA 

While Sarkisian and Kiffin have different personalities, it's clear that they've both had a similar career path. Considering this pick will be Haden's legacy as USC athletic director, it may have benefitted him more to go with a more creative choice, like hiring Andy Enfield as USC's basketball coach. Did Haden potentially put all of his eggs in the basket of Lane Kiffin 2.0?

A name that floated around as a potential candidate was Vanderbilt coach James Franklin. Franklin has taken a perennial bottom-tier program in Vanderbilt and has won eight games in two out of his three seasons there. Sarkisian in his five seasons at Washington, on the other hand, had only one eight-win season there. Like Sarkisian, Franklin is a very good recruiter, but he's also won more with less talent. Additionally, he would have been USC's first-ever African American head coach, a move that would have signaled that the Trojans were ready to try a new approach. 

Sarkisian's certainly not a bad coach. He took over a Washington team that went 0-12 the season before he came, and turned them into an above-average squad. However, for a USC fan base that expects high-end bowl games, it's discouraging to see the Huskies go 5-4 in the Pac-12 this year with two of his big recruits, Keith Price and Bishop Sankey, now upperclassmen. With the prestige that USC's head coaching position supposedly had, couldn't they have hired a guy with more flare instead of just someone who was on Pete Carroll's staff during the glory days?

The big knock on Kiffin is that he rarely won games against ranked teams, with the one big exception being USC's 38-35 win against Oregon in 2011. In five years at Washington, Sarkisian went 8-18 against ranked teams, including a lackluster 3-11 record over the past three seasons. 

Haden did not need to make an impulsive move right after the UCLA loss, he needed to secure the candidate that would ultimately return USC back to prominence. Instead, I feel that Haden didn't want to battle against potential openings in Florida and Texas, and made a safe choice that wouldn't be controversial amongst USC's boosters. Instead of trying to create his own legacy, Haden instead is once again trying to follow a formula that clearly did not work under Kiffin. 

Carroll brought back USC from the dead, and led the Trojans to a golden age. That doesn't mean you have to hire another assistant coach from his staff to return to that dominance. But hey, if Sarkisian doesn't work out, Haden can just hire Norm Chow as USC's new head coach. That is, if he's still around as athletic director. 

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