LOS ANGELES -- For the first time in some 17 years, USC fans stormed the field after a Trojan win Saturday night, celebrating as if they'd just won a national title after their team's stunning upset of No. 4 Stanford, 20-17, on a last-minute field goal. On this night, the Trojans didn't snap a 13-game winless streak against arch-rival Notre Dame. The victory over the Cardinal, though, had a surreal quality to it. After all, it has only been six weeks since head coach Lane Kiffin was fired and a proud program was left in disarray. USC AD Pat Haden tabbed Ed Orgeron as the Trojans' interim head coach to handle the remaining eight games. No one outside of the USC locker room expected much. The team was 0-2 in Pac-12 play and Orgeron's previous history as a head coach -- three rough seasons in the SEC at Ole Miss, where he won three conference games combined -- left many, especially down south, snickering.But a truly crazy thing is happening in Los Angeles. That team that was left for dead in late September, is now 5-0 in Pac-12 play since Orgeron took over and just notched its first win over a ranked team since 2011. On the field, as fans and families swarmed the field from a sellout crowd of 93,607, Trojan offensive assistants Clay Helton, Mike Summers and Tommy Robinson, three coaches with a combined 76 years of professional experience, celebrated in a group hug, jumping up and down.'This is unbelievable,' said the 50-year-old Robinson, as tears welled up in his eyes. 'I am so proud of these guys and this team.'Robinson, the USC running backs coach, has grown close to Orgeron, and took the moment to campaign for the former defensive line coach to become the Trojans' permanent head coach.'Ain't no doubt in my mind that Ed Orgeron should be named USC's head coach, and I don't care who hears me,' said Robinson. 'No man on this planet can make these kids play harder than he can. We got 50 kids on scholarship playing like they are and like they did tonight against that team? This guy is phenomenal.'The undermanned Trojans, who only subbed two defensive reserves into the game the entire night against the punishing Stanford attack (and one of those two subs, CB Torin Harris, only played one snap), held the Cardinal to a season-low 17 points, a week after David Shaw's team mauled No. 2 Oregon. Stanford, which came into the game converting third downs at 52 percent, managed just four-of-12 Saturday night.'It was a tremendous effort by the organization and the coaching staff,' Orgeron said. 'For some reason on Monday there was a belief that we were going to find a way to win this game.'I'm awfully proud of our young men. This is something that we've wanted for the past Trojans and coaches. This is for the Trojan family.'It's a family that has been through a lot since Pete Carroll moved on to the NFL. There's been hefty NCAA sanctions that had gutted the program. There was the tumultous Kiffin tenure and the cloud of uncertainty hanging over a program still coping with severe scholarship reductions. That Orgeron, a 52-year-old gravelly voiced Louisiana native who predated Carroll in Los Angeles and has embraced the USC heritage probably as much as any Trojan grad, is the one leading this improbable story only seems to galvanize the program and its fans that much more and make it all seem that much more curious.In his three tumultous seasons in Oxford, his record was 10-25. (I had a front row seat for much of his time there while I worked on my recruiting book, 'Meat Market.') Orgeron's Ole Miss teams played hard and were almost always competitive, but they couldn't seem to turn the proverbial corner. One particularly heartbreaking day came in October, 2007 when it seemed the Rebels were about to cap off a frenetic comeback to upset Nick Saban's Alabama team in Oxford, but instead there was a controversial call made by the officials, essentially ending the game. Ole Miss lost 27-24. A few hours after the game I recall Orgeron's wife telling me how some Ole Miss fans just kind of shrugged their shoulders, as if trying to console her by saying, 'Maybe this all just wasn't meant to be.'Five weeks later, Orgeron was fired. The move came a day after his decision to go on fourth down, two touchdowns up against Mississippi State, blew up in his face and the Bulldogs rallied for a 17-14 win. I suspected that deep down Orgeron believed if his team routed their arch-rival in Starkville, his bosses couldn't fire him.Orgeron, like the Ole Miss coach he replaced and the one who replaced him, clashed with his AD, and that lack of trust helped create a toxic enviroment around the program. He had recruited some good young players, but never stayed around long enough to see them develop. Those players would later become the nucleus of back-to-back Cotton Bowl teams that his successor, Houston Nutt, got to coach. Since then, Orgeron has bounced from a year in the NFL with the New Orleans Saints to another season at Tennessee and then back home to USC. And now, somehow, he's living out a fantasy of sorts. Getting a do-over at the program that means more to him than any other.How he's grown as a head coach is almost mind-boggling to me. He has proven to be radically different than he was in his time in Mississippi -- and just as importantly, radically different than his predecessor, Kiffin. Orgeron has done seemingly everything differently than he did in his first time as a head coach. The joke in college football circles is that ever since being flipped the keys the gruff Cajun has adopted the George Costanza's bizarro 'opposite' philosophy. On Monday, Orgeron admitted he's never seen Seinfeld but laughed and nodded when told about mirroring Constanza's 180.Orgeron explained to me last month, a few days before his first game as USC's head man, that he's learned not to chase ghosts and instead keep the big picture in mind. Gone are the days when he worked everyone into the ground and instead he would remain relentlessly upbeat and enthusiastic. He would trust his assistants and his players, and they'd lean on each other. He'd treat them like he treats his own sons. He would be the guy recruits fall in love with -- the one whose presence dominates a room. Not the one who seemed so on edge. A few days after Orgeron took over, he hired 72-year-old Pete Jenkins, his old college coach and mentor, to join the staff. A lifelong D-line coach from the NFL and the rigors of the SEC, Jenkins knows Orgeron better than anyone. A half-hour after the game had ended, Jenkins, too, had tears in his eyes while he spoke about USC's win and about his protege.'I think he learned so much from his time at Ole Miss,' Jenkins said. 'The thing is, he learned a lot about what to do, and what not to do. Those players we have, they love that guy. And that is a really powerful thing. That's a really good line we faced, and we played them without subbing out one guy on the line all night. They're giving us everything they have and they really are so focused. 'At this point in time, [Orgeron] is the best guy for this job. Everything is about timing. I'm not saying he'd be perfect for everywhere else. Some places are different, but I believe this: he's perfect for USC. He truly loves this place and these people.'The Trojans still have two games remaining. Next week they play at Colorado before finishing up the regular season against cross-town rival UCLA. Whether Orgeron gets to coach the Trojans after this season is anybody's guess. But one thing is certain: the guy who was the longest of long shots when he was first announced on a sunny Sunday in September, is a legit candidate now. According to sources, Orgeron has a lot of influential boosters in his corner and an increasing number of fans. But he knows his team still has a lot of work left. 'All I can do is work with [the team] every day,' Orgeron said. 'I think everything happens for a reason and that there's a greater plan. What that plan is I don't know, but we'll work together on a daily basis. That's all I know.'
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