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Former USC walk-on remembers a favor Lane Kiffin delivered

Lane Kiffin, teammates and coaches congratulate Eric Childs in the locker room after the Trojans win at Colorado on Nov. 4, 2011. (Courtesy USCTrojans.com)

The image of Lane Kiffin being fired at the airport during the 2013 season is what most of the college football world remembers of the coach’s time at Southern Cal. The lasting memory Eric Childs has of his college coach isn’t like that at all.

Childs remembers Kiffin – now the University of Alabama’s offensive coordinator – calling him to the middle of the locker room after a blowout win at Colorado on Nov. 4, 2011. That story starts six years earlier.

Childs broke his femur playing high school football as a sophomore on Nov. 4, 2005. He missed his entire junior year before coming back to play as a senior, then walked on at USC in spring of 2009.

He was a tight end/defensive end, adding depth on the practice squad but being left at home when the Trojans traveled. Kiffin had planned on taking him to a game at Cal early in his senior year in 2011, but had to take him off at the last minute for another player.

“He apologized to me and said it was a really crummy situation that he had to pull me off the travel squad,” Childs said. “That’s when I told him, in the weight room after he took me off the Cal list, that the only game I wanted to travel to was the Colorado one. I told him that Nov. 4 was a really, really important day to me.”

The Colorado game happened to be six years to the day after his injury. It happened to be on a Friday night, just like it was when Childs was hurt. And much of his family happened to be from Aurora, an hour away from Boulder.

The game was well in hand in the fourth quarter when Kiffin flooded the field with walk-ons. Childs went in for a series at left defensive end, and the head coach stopped him before he left the sideline.

“He kind of grabbed my facemask and said, ‘Look, this is the reason you’re out here,’” Childs said. “’Everyone that said you couldn’t do it, here’s your chance to prove them long. Prove your surgeons wrong, your PT (physical therapy) people wrong, all your doctors and people who said you’d never play football again. You’re on USC now, you’re going to get to go play a series. Go make something of it.’”

The second play of the series was a stretch run to Childs’ side, and he came free to make the tackle. Colorado didn’t convert that series of downs, punted and the Trojans ran out the clock.

After the game, Kiffin called Childs to the middle of the locker room. He hadn’t told his teammates about his broken femur in high school, hoping the coaches and trainers wouldn’t hold him back for fear of injury. He only told Kiffin about it after being taken off the travel list to Cal.

Kiffin told Childs’ story to the rest of the team. They celebrated together. Childs had several family members at the game, and they celebrated as well. His phone was glutted with texts from friends who had watched him make his only collegiate tackle on TV.

“The reason why I’ll forever be grateful for that is because I always thought that my leg break would kind of kill my athleticism and I would never have a chance to prove that I reached my peak again that I was at in high school, that I would ever be as good of an athlete as I was before the leg injury,” he said. “But being able to suit up for USC, get into a game and actually make a play was an opportunity to tell myself I was finally over it.

“For six years, I had in the back of my mind that this leg break would hold me back forever, I’m not going to be at my full potential anymore, but Kiffin gave me the opportunity to get over the injury and move on with my life.”

Childs is 26 now and works as a manufacturing engineer for a pharmaceutical company. His college football career ended three weeks later, when the Trojans finished the regular season and NCAA sanctions prevented them from going to a bowl game. Childs’ life after football continued on.

Kiffin left a lasting impact.

“He changed my life in a way that he’ll never be able to ascertain, I’m sure, but I don’t think he really got much out of it for himself,” Childs said. “The bad rap that he got when he was at Oakland, when he left Tennessee, when he was (fired after losing to Arizona State), that’s all people really remember about Kiffin. And I don’t remember that at all about him. I just remember a guy who apologized for having to take me off the Cal travel list and then took me to Colorado just as a favor to me.”

Childs won’t go so far as to say that he’ll be rooting for Alabama when the Crimson Tide plays his alma mater on Saturday. But he hopes Kiffin’s offense rolls as the Trojans win. Some members of his family will be cheering for Alabama, though, just because of Kiffin.

They still remember Nov. 4, 2011.

“There was this moment in the Colorado locker room where Coach Kiffin is sitting up on a laundry chute or something and I have the whole team around me, and he had just made the announcement that I had made a tackle,” Childs said. “(Former USC player and coach) Sammy Knight is getting up to congratulate me and you see a bunch of players’ hands in the air. I had really big, bushy hair back then, but you can see a super-content smile on my face. My whole team was behind me and cheering me on for what I was able to do that game. That’s my lasting memory of it.”

Reach Ben Jones at ben@tidesports.com or 205-722-0196.

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