Flip the Script
Ed Orgeron
The next week we (USC) beat Colorado on the road to go to 6-1 since I took over. We moved up to number twenty-three in the polls – the first time we’d been ranked since the night we’d lost to Washington State in early September. All we had left in the regular season was our rivalry game against UCLA. They were number twenty-two in the country.
I had a meeting with Pat Haden the day before the UCLA game. He told me he was 99 percent sure that I was going to be the next head coach at USC. We had talked about a deal at three million dollars a year. He had the contract all made up. I signed it. He had it on his desk, but he didn’t sign it. It felt disrespectful the way he dangled the job in front of me.
But then he introduced me to some people as the next head coach at USC.
“I’ve just got to make it a formality on Sunday,” he said. “Tell your wife to stay over to Monday. Make sure you’ve got some suits.”
I brought my family out for the UCLA game. My boys flew in from Louisiana.
The game kicked off at 5:00 p.m. Haden had called me in the hotel earlier in the day, which was odd.
“You know this is a very important day for you, Ed Orgeron,” he told me. I had a really bad feeling about it. I was thinking, You’ve already told me that I’m going to be the next head coach.
I think he was under a lot of pressure to hire me, and there was something inside of him that didn’t want me to win that game so he could pull out. At least that was my feeling. But I’d taken his word for it that he would call me on Sunday and offer me the job.
We were a little off Saturday night against UCLA. We were fired up before the game. I don’t know if we were trying too hard. I had an eerie feeling all week that we wouldn’t stop their quarterback, Brett Hundley. We didn’t have a good game plan for him with their QB draws and their run game. We couldn’t slow Hundley down. Our offensive line got banged up in the game. We lost our center early in the game. We struggled to score. We lost, 35-14.
After the game, I knew Haden wasn’t going to hire me. I just knew it. Sunday morning, I put my kids on the plane back to Louisiana. They were crying because they thought USC wasn’t going to hire me after the loss. I told them, “This is going to be okay,” even though I knew it probably wouldn’t.
I stayed in that hotel all day long. Haden never called. That man had told me he was going to call me. He never did. I stayed up all night long. I couldn’t sleep.
Monday morning, I heard from someone else. USC was hiring Steve Sarkisian for the job. I heard about it from someone else. Not Pat Haden. I was not happy.
Pat and I met later that Monday morning in the head coach’s office at USC. It was very intense – probably as intense as any meeting I’ve ever been in during my career. We met for about thirty minutes.
I told him he was making a mistake. “I am the better hire for USC.” I asked him point blank why I was not getting the job. I asked, “Was it because I was never good enough for you?”
He couldn’t answer me.
I loved USC. I knew I was the better hire. I felt betrayed – like I was promised something, and he pulled the rug out from under me.
I met with the team a little bit later to say goodbye to them. I took the high road as much as I could.
“Hey men, it’s been a wonderful journey,” I told them. “This is still a great place.” I told them they were still at the best university and that they needed to follow their new head coach. “Tomorrow morning, I am going to bring my kids to school. Something that I have not done in four year. I have stayed in a hotel for four years. I have neglected my family for four years.” I told them that I loved them.
It was like a funeral. Every one of the players came to hug me. Some told me that I was like the father they never had. The coaches each came up and hugged me too.
Haden was in the room. His face looked sick, seeing all those kids crying. He had to be disgusted with himself. I don’t know how he sat through that meeting with those kids. I think he was the one guy in L.A. who didn’t want me to be the head coach at USC.
I just had to get out of there. Nobody was going to convince me to stay. It was such a miserable day. Kelly and I got in our Tahoe and rode off to the airport to fly back to New Orleans that night. When we got on the plane, I told Kelly, “Besides the day I buried my father, this has been the worst day of my life.”
She said, “No, it’s not. God has a better plan for you.”
“Well,” I said, “it’d better be good.”