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This Is Strange: Happy Birthday, Britney

By Paul Myerberg   //   Dec 2, 2011

A lot of strange things have happened since August. Texas A&M, after making some hints over the summer, left the Big 12 for the SEC. Over the last 24 hours, the university has dismissed its football coach and its athletic director; Bill Byrne followed Mike Sherman out the door this afternoon. Pittsburgh and Syracuse are heading to the A.C.C., West Virginia to the Big 12, eventually. The Big East will soon feature teams from Texas, if not San Diego. Two SEC teams — two that met in the regular season — will meet for the national title.

A quarterback from Baylor might win the Heisman Trophy. Michigan beat Ohio State. Boise State lost at home. The two best teams in the Sun Belt might be Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette. Yeah, it’s been strange. With all that, this might be the strangest thing that’s happened all season:

That’s Lane Kiffin, the newly-minted king of U.S.C., sending out 30th birthday wishes to Britney Spears — yeah, she’s 30. Feel old. Yesterday, after it surfaced that he had sent Urban Meyer a note of congratulations on being hired at Ohio State, Kiffin told The Sporting News’ Steve Greenberg that he was “growing up.”

Today, Kiffin is sending birthday wishes to a former pop star. Hey, it’s Los Angeles. And Kiffin is decidedly being Kiffin, meaning just when you think you’ve figured him out, he peels back a whole new layer of the onion.

And you know what? The only difference between Kiffin and his predecessor, Pete Carroll, is the choice of celebrity: Carroll went with Snoopp Dogg and Will Ferrell, while Kiffin leans towards celebrities closer to his age range.

Just be happy Kiffin didn’t send a birthday message to one of the following celebrities: Hanson, Justin Bieber, the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian or Lindsay Lohan.

And you know what else? As long as Kiffin wins 10 games and takes home the Pac-12 South in the regular season, he can send birthday messages to whomever he likes. If you can remember, no one had a problem with Carroll making U.S.C.’s practice field an audition hall for Hollywood’s elite when he was ruling college football with an iron fist.

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Tags: Lane Kiffin, U.S.C.

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