High school coach bashes Lane Kiffin for deferring recruits scholarship

Photo courtesy Yahoo! Sports

The dumpster fire that is USC coach Lane Kiffin’s moral compass continues to amaze and flabbergast even his own recruits — or former recruits, that is.

Four-star recruit Kylie Fitts of Redlands (Calif.) East Valley High School has been ranked by Rivals.com as the seventh-best defensive end in the entire country. According to his coach, Kurt Bruich, Fitts had been looking forward to playing for the Trojans, since, well, ever since. In fact, Fitts took extra classes throughout his time in high school in order to graduate a semester early so that he could arrive on USC’s campus a full semester before most of the Trojans other recruits.

He was scheduled to arrive in La La Land on on January 10. That is, until Kiffin pulled a ‘Kiffin’, of course.

Fitts spoke to several of Kiffin’s assistants at the Under Armour All-America game, and across the board all were excited to have the player with the rest of the team as soon as possible. That was on January 5. Two days later, and thus three days before Fitts’ life was supposed to change forever as he entered college, he received a phone call saying his scholarship was no longer available for the spring semester.

Say what?

“Recruiting man, it’s crazy,” coach Bruich told the Riverside Press-Enterprise. “He’s wanted to go to USC for as long as he can remember and now he feels betrayed. He did everything he was supposed to do from his end and he was a loyal kid. I think they thought because of that loyalty he’d still want to go there. He said to me ‘What am I supposed to do for the next five months?’ It seems shady. I think it seems shady to everyone.”

Kiffin and the program did not pull his scholarship entirely, as Bruich alludes to, but rather deferred it until the fall semester. But, like he says, why would Kiffin make Fitts wait? Most coaches would die to have a talent such as Fitts’ on campus as early as possible. Especially with how enthusiastically he was hoping to sport his Trojans’ gear.

No longer.

Fitts will not be heading to Los Angeles in the fall. Instead, the young man is looking for an entirely new place to play. His coach told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that Notre Dame, Washington and UCLA were all back in the mix for the player’s services.

As for Kiffin, the young head coach has already run into trouble with the NCAA regarding deflated footballs, changing players’ jerseys at halftime and for simply not showing up for a Sun Bowl shared dinner with the Georgia Tech players who went on to embarrass the Trojans in the game itself. Like a large chunk of fans and members of the sports media, Bruich told the world that he is finally seeing Kiffin’s true colors.

When people are desperate, their true colors show. Take the USC coach, captain of an underachieving ship. His true color: SHADY! #goKylie

— Kurt Bruich (@CoachBruich) January 11, 2013

Fitts’ and his coach’s eyes have been opened, and now the star player and hard worker is headed somewhere else to play his college football.

It remains to be seen, of course, how many other young superstars either take their blinders off to see Kiffin for what he is, or are simply forced to by the man himself, as was the case with Fitts.

How do you feel about Kiffin and his latest decision? Sound off below!

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