In two weeks, Colorado State football coach Sonny Lubick has seen one former assistant win the national championship and a one-time lowly grad assistant become the youngest head coach in the NFL at age 31.
Urban Meyer’s feat at Florida was no surprise. If not for the last name, Lane Kiffin, who was appointed coach of the Oakland Raiders on Monday, might have been just another anonymous GA to pass through the CSU program in 1999.
“You could see he was a sharp guy. He’d been around football his whole life,” Lubick said Tuesday. “You knew he was going to be a coach. How fast he’d move up, no one knew.”
During his stint in Fort Collins, everyone knew Kiffin was the son of longtime Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, one of Lubick’s oldest friends in the coaching business.
After CSU, it was on to a brief stop on the Jacksonville Jaguars support staff before joining Pete Carroll’s USC staff.
“He really grew as a coach at USC. He’s been there for their whole run under Pete Carroll,” Lubick said. “He had a good influence from his dad.
“It’s good to see guys you know move up.”
