USC fans probably would like to think Mike Garrett had this planned–  and reviewed and updated that plan at the end of every season.

“When Pete Carroll leaves, and he will, whom do I want to be the next USC football coach? In what order of preference?”

Because USC people probably would like to think that their athletic director had calmly proceeded to the next name on his checklist (the one after Mike Riley, Jack Del Rio, Jeff Fisher and maybe even Steve Sarkisian) … before he hired Lane Kiffin.

You do not want to bring in a Lane Kiffin as a panic hire.  Not without a lot more thought than the 24-hour timeline that we seem to be looking at would indicate.

We can list “pros” for hiring Lane Kiffin. But we also can last a batch of “cons.”

Let’s start with the cons.

–He just bailed, after one year, on a Tennessee program that had signed him to a six-year deal. Yes, we know that the loyalty of college football coaches is always for sale, and the sales are held every winter, but this ranks with the all-timers for cheesiness. An espn.com columnist (and also a Tennessee alumnus) just called Kiffin the devil. Practically.

–He was 5-15 as an NFL head coach. OK,  it was the Raiders, circa 2007-08, and Vince Lombardi may have gone 5-15 with the 2007-2008 Raiders and Al Davis. Also, his demise with the Raiders (four games into the 2008 season) was ugly, with Davis describing Kiffin as a “flat-out liar” who brought “disgrace to the organization. Kiffin and Davis are still arguing over three months’ worth of his 2008 salary.

–At Tennessee, he moved fully into the “loose cannon” phase of his career, tweaking Florida coach Urban Meyer and incorrectly attributing NCAA violations to him. That led to a public apology. He also told Tennessee fans that they could look forward to singing the school’s fight song all night after they defeated Florida in the coming season. Tennessee played Florida close, but lost.

–Kiffin’s program was guilty of several apparently minor NCAA violations in his year there, some having to do with recruiting.  He was cavalier about a very serious topic when he said, essentially, that the NCAA nosing around was because other schools were jealous of their success and was a sign of respect.

–Kiffin was the offensive coordinator at USC in 2005-06, after the departure of Norm Chow, and it was a period that seemed to mark a steady erosion in game-planning, team execution and the vertical passing game. A 13-9 defeat to UCLA that kept USC from playing for a fourth consecutive national title had Kiffin’s fingerprints all over it.

–He is 0-1 against UCLA as a head coach. Tennessee managed to lose at home, 19-15, to a mediocre Bruins team. Losing to UCLA is not what USC coaches are supposed to do. Even when they’re coaching at another school.

Had enough cons?

There are pros, too.

–Kiffin is massively confident — arrogant, actually — and that goes down well at USC, where confidence and arrogance are expected and prized.  USC coaches should never, ever give credit to any other program, and never poor-mouth their own, and Kiffin will not do that. He knows the Trojans Way, and that matters.

–He did six years as an assistant for Pete Carroll, and if you can’t have Pete, you would want one of his top assistants, right? Must have learned something from the master. And even though those two offenses Kiffin ran (with a lot of input from Sarkisian) seemed formulaic and even dreary, USC did go 23-3 and won two BCS games.

–Al Davis hired him. Al may be crazy as a loon these days, deep into his Howard Hughes period of dementia, but Al has a history of identifying outstanding coaches early in the careers, with the top examples being John Madden, Mike Shanahan and Jon Gruden. Also, Davis clashed with two of those guys (Shanahan and Gruden), and fired them, only to see them go on to win Super Bowls elsewhere. Al Davis picking you out … can be a good thing, long-term.

–Kiffin just went 7-5 in the regular season while coaching in the toughest conference in the nation, the SEC. His team beat Georgia and South Carolina. Which isn’t at all bad for a first-year coach.

–He is dynamic, like Pete was, and is nearly 15 years younger (34) than Carroll was (49) when he took over at USC. The Trojans seemed to thrive under Carroll’s vigor and enthusiasm and massive work ethic, and Kiffin has all that.

–Kiffin recruits like nobody’s business. He was the recruiting coordinator for some of USC’s top classes, and he had it goin’ on at Tennessee, before he bailed. Job 1 in college football is bringing in the athletes, and Kiffin can do it.

–He comes with some really nice helpers. His father, Monte, a highly respected defensive coordinator with lots of NFL experience, will run USC’s defense. Also returning,  with the younger Kiffin, is assistant Ed Orgeron, a sort of Next Generation Marv Goux, who players love and also is a fabled recruiter.

–Kiffin probably didn’t cost the Trojans a fortune.  He was getting $2 million a year at Tennessee, more or less, and will command much less than the $4.4 mill USC was paying Pete. (There is a downside; Monte Kiffin and Orgeron will make serious money, and if Kiffin brings in Norm Chow, as is rumored, that cost of that staff of assistants will be staggering; Kiffin’s staff at Tennessee was the most expensive in the nation, at $3.3 million, according to a USA Today report.)

So … pros and cons. We would think Mike Garrett went over them all.

It is a little alarming that Mr. Heisman was down to his fourth or fifth choice before he got a coach, but Carroll was down the line, too, nine years before.

What this could come down to is … Lane Kiffin’s apparent immaturity and penchant for speaking before he thinks … vs. his street cred as a recruiter, as a decent Xs and Os guy and as the sort of strutting peacock of a coach that USC seems to like.

My own take? Lane Kiffin is a good hire. For USC. He would be a bad hire in many other circumstances. But at USC? Yes. He should do fine, especially with all the old guys around to take care of the detail work and apply some brakes to the loose cannon side of his nature.

The next few years should be particularly interesting at USC.