SAUL YOUNG/Knoxville News Sentinel

Ed Orgeron was there to watch the early rise of Lane Kiffin, working with him for many years. Both coaches were assistants at USC under Pete Carroll for four seasons from 2001-04, winning a pair of national championships together.

So when Kiffin landed the head coaching job at Tennessee in 2009, Orgeron was one of the first people he called to join his staff. The two didn’t stay in Knoxville long, as after only one season, Kiffin accepted the job to return to USC as head coach when Carroll left to coach in the NFL.

Again, he took Orgeron with him. That stint lasted a little more than three years before Kiffin was fired in the middle of the 2013 season. Orgeron took over as the interim coach and finished the season out in his place.

Now that it’s been more than a decade since then, Kiffin recently took the job at LSU, where Orgeron won a national championship in 2019. That allowed the former to reflect on their time together and how it all went down.

“Lane treated me with the utmost respect,” Orgeron said on Bussin’ with the Boys. “I was like head coach No. 2 on the staff. The reason I went back with him — because he and I were tight at USC. He was a young coach, but man, a great, great recruiter, great evaluator. Had a bright future ahead. I went to go work with his daddy, Monte Kiffin. That’s the reason I went to Tennessee.

“Then the USC job comes open. Look, nothing wrong with Tennessee, but look, USC we had been there and Tennessee’s just a little bit different. I believe if we had stayed at Tennessee, we would have won the SEC East and we would have played in the championship for years to come. We were doing a tremendous job there, tremendous job recruiting.”

Kiffin and Orgeron helped take USC to a 10-2 record in only their second season, entering 2012 as the No. 1 team in the AP Poll. But they failed to live up to expectations, going just 7-6.

After a 3-2 start to the 2013 season, the Trojans decided they had enough and let Kiffin go. That gave Orgeron a chance to show what he could do as a head coach. He helped them go 6-2 the rest of the way.

“So we go to USC and he does good the first year and then the second year, things kind went south,” Orgeron said. “Wasn’t doing good on offense, and that was shocking to me. Once we got beat 62-something and that’s when I knew we have to go from the 4-3 to the 3-4. I felt like burying myself in the Coliseum that day, but Lane asked me, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘We’ve got to go to a 3-4’ and we went to a 3-4. But it worked out.

“Did he lose the locker room? A little bit. I don’t know what was going on in his personal life. I just went to work and went home. But I know things were starting to slide a little bit. So yeah, he got fired on the tarmac and the next day they named me interim head coach. All the things I had learned and all the things I said I was going to do, now it was time to take my little notebook out and do it.”

Orgeron did so well that he even got Kiffin to advocate for him taking the full-time job. Of course, that didn’t end up happening, but it all worked out as he took a job as defensive line coach at LSU and became head coach there by 2016.

Now Orgeron has been out of coaching for a few years, but he still has a great relationship with Kiffin. In a way, both of them launched their careers through there expereinces together and he’ll always have fond memories.

“He was recommending me for the job,” Orgeron said. “He said, ‘Coach O’s doing a great job.’ We had won five game in a row and he said, ‘I think USC oughta hire him.’ After that, he’s always asked me to go with him. He’s always asked me to be part of his staffs. So we have a great relationship.”