Talty's book "Lane Being Lane" is on Spotify now and part of their monthly premium service

I am up to the Raiders, but not to his firing.

Some interesting things in the book about coaches who have been prominent in the SEC now or in the past:

(Maybe this stuff was talked about at the time, but I didn't follow USC or the NFL close enough at that time to know any of it)

Sark was brought to USC by Norm Chow, his former OC at BYU and USC's OC during their national title years. Chow was trying to help Sark in his early career.

Sark became friends with Lane and helped run Chow off, kind of like Fulmer did with Majors. Chow won't talk about it like Majors did as he said if you don't have anything good to say, better to say nothing.

Sark (back at USC as QB coach) was the Raiders first choice, but after interviewing for the job, ghosted them when they tried to call back to give it to him. Lane was going to go with him as his OC. The Raiders were calling Lane to try to find Sark and Lane would kind of hem/haw. Raiders asked would he still coach and Lane said he wouldn't want to work for a coach he didn't know. Raiders then asked if he would be interested in being the head coach.

Lane, not getting along with Al Davis, wanted the Arkansas job and told the Raiders he would quit if they wouldn't make him honor the contract and give them money back for doing it. Davis said he could quit with no penalty if he coached the full season. But Petrino quit on the Falcons to make sure he got the job over Lane. Lane was livid.

At least so far, the problems in LA was mostly Davis, though a more seasoned coach probably would have been able to deal with him better.

Other stuff

-Lane wasn't too interested in following rules and having someone tell him what to do. Was always in trouble with his high school coaches for not conforming. Shocking, I know.

-Lane was a genius with film even at an early age.

-Lane trashed talked both his teammates and the opponents. At practice you hated him. In the game, you loved him.

-Lane never played a live snap of college ball, but even as a freshman was telling the QBs ahead of him on the depth chart what they were doing wrong. Would tell other players what they were doing wrong. This led to him being bullied. Some who were friendly with him told him he had to stand up for himself, but he never did.

-Interestingly, Lane and Sark both had drinking problems at USC. Lane's was more in private and most said they didn't know he had a drinking problem. Sark, however, would smell of booze at practice and would do tequila shots with players. The players who played under Sark while he was an assistant were not shocked to find out he was showing up to public appearances drunk while head coach at USC.

At least to this point, the book is not all bad about Kiffin. Some of his high school friends have good things to say. Some of the players at both Fresno and USC did not like him as a grad assistant or position coach and felt like he only got the job because of Monte.

-Oh, one really funny story. Orgeron fought one of his players at USC for breaking curfew. Dude's shirt was in tatters, had a swollen chin and bit his tongue when hit him with an upper cut. The guy told his position coach what happened when his coach asked him if he got into a bar fight. The position coach pulled Orgeron aside and said if he ever hit one of his ****ing players again he'd beat his arse. And yet, the player said he still loves O to this day.