USC head coach Lane Kiffin was apparently a little confused by comments made last month by Tennessee Athletic Director Mike Hamilton. Hamilton said Kiffin wound up not being a “good cultural fit” for UT.
From GoVolsExtra.com:
“I don’t really know exactly what that means,” said Kiffin, who was UT’s coach for just 14 months. “I don’t think at the end of day that has anything to do with whether you score points or whether you win games. Where you’re from? I don’t know. That’s just my opinion.
“Is Nick Saban from Alabama? Is Urban Meyer from Florida? Those are two of the best coaches in the country. So I don’t think that really means anything.”
What’s funny about Hamilton’s comments is that he never would have made them had Kiffin stayed at Tennessee and won. Had Kiffin won with the Vols, he probably would have done so in the same brash manner he exhibited when he first set foot on UT’s campus. But since he was a cocky, abrasive loudmouth that didn’t fulfill his promises, all of a sudden he wasn’t a “good cultural fit.”
I’m no Lane Kiffin apologist, but I think Hamilton is reaching here. Steve Spurrier is from Florida and was one of the cockiest head coaches the SEC had ever seen. Yet the conference embraced him because they either loved him or loved to beat him.
“His skill set is off the chart,” Clarkson said. “I’ve never seen anyone at his age do what he’s been able to do.”
Clarkson then directed Kiffin to a video of Sills that is making the rounds on YouTube.
Kiffin watched it and called him back immediately.
“He was like, ‘This kid is incredible. How old is he again?’
“I was like, ‘That’s the problem, he’s 13.’ ”
A couple of hours later, the Sills family called Kiffin and they spoke for the first time. USC had always been Sills’ dream school, according to his father, David Sills IV.
“I’m as shocked as anybody,” Sills’ father said. “I was just talking with friends yesterday about what it’ll be like four years from now when David goes through the recruiting process. I never expected this to happen so soon.
This video was taken before Lane Kiffin sat down to speak to the Knoxville media about his decision to leave Tennessee to take the USC job. One television reporter (or producer?) doesn’t want to agree to Kiffin’s terms. It’s pretty funny to watch thirty people trip over each other trying to get a stupid press conference started.
Back in October 2007, the media jumped to call Al Davis everything from “crazy” to “senile” when the Raiders owner fired Kiffin under the most bizarre circumstances imaginable. With an overhead projector exhibiting a hand written letter he had penned to Kiffin, Davis referred to his then 32-year-old coach as a “flat-out liar” and said he was guilty of “bringing disgrace to the organization.”
On June 8, 2009, the Raiders organization issued a statement about Lane Kiffin’s hiring at Tennessee. The statement read: “Lane Kiffin is a flat-out liar. He lied to the team, he lied to the fans, and he lied to the media. He will try to destroy that university like he tried to destroy the Raiders.”
At the time it was released, the media viewed it as nothing more than sour grapes. In hindsight, Davis was right on the money. Once a weasel, always a weasel.
Now, the rat will have his cheese (and some wine) in Southern California.
After he fired Kiffin in ’07, Davis famously noted, “It hurts because I picked the guy. I picked the wrong guy.”
The University of Tennessee now knows just how Davis felt.
And if history tells us anything, so — eventually — will USC.
See, I told you Al Davis wasn’t crazy.
It is amazing how Lane Kiffin stormed into Knoxville, made all of these brash comments about turning UT into a winner, attacked other SEC coaches, brought in some recruits that would later be arrested for armed robbery and then left the program after only one season. That’s freaking unbelievable.
What better way to show that you’re angry at the head coach that left your team high and dry then to burn a mattress?
I’ve always wanted to see the expression on the guy’s face that volunteered to burn his mattress when he woke up the next morning and didn’t have a bed anymore.
“Troy…Troy!”
“What?”
“What the hell happened to my bed man? It’s gone!”
“Dude, you burned it in the protest last night. Don’t you remember?”
“F**k no I don’t remember! What the hell, man!”
“Yeah, you wanted to do it to protest Lane Kiffin’s departure.”
In rather surprising news, USC has tabbed former Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin to fill the position vacated by Pete Carroll, who signed a contract over the weekend to coach the Seattle Seahawks.
From ESPN.com:
“We are really excited to welcome Lane Kiffin back to USC,” Garrett said in a statement. “I was able to watch him closely when he was an assistant with us and what I saw was a bright, creative young coach who I thought would make an excellent head coach here if the opportunity ever arose. I’m confident he and his staff will keep USC football performing at the high level that we expect.”
He was a member of the USC coaching staff from 2001 to ‘06, first as wide receivers coach and then as offensive coordinator under Carroll.
Kiffin will bring his father and defensive coordinator, Monte Kiffin, and assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron to Southern California with him.
The hiring is surprising, but what isn’t surprising is the way Kiffin left Tennessee after just one season. The fact of the matter is that college coaches come and go as they please. As long as there is more money and a bigger opportunity to be had, coaches will always be a threat to leave.
That said, it never ceases to amaze me that coaches can walk into a recruit’s home and talk about commitment, loyalty and family, and then leave a program at the drop of a hat. There is something incredible wrong with the process, but it has become such a norm that nobody is surprised by it anymore. As the clichéd response goes: It is what it is.
I wonder if some in Knoxville are secretly glad to see Kiffin go. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and never seemed like a great fit for UT. Considering he helped Carroll make USC’s program a success earlier this decade, it stands to reason that he will be a much better fit in Southern Cal, but we’ll see. It’ll also be exciting to see what Monte Kiffin can do with the talent he’ll have on the defensive side of the ball at SC.
This is pure conjecture on my part, but if I’m venturing a guess as to whom will replace Kiffin at Tennessee, I’d say Jon Gruden might be a great fit. He was a graduate assistant there from 1986 to 1987 and also met his wife at UT as well. If he wanted to take a crack at the collegiate level, Knoxville might just be a solid fit.
According to a report by ESPN.com, Tennessee is under investigation for using recruiting “hostesses” to help lure high school football prospects to come to the university.
The NCAA appears to be strongly interested in Tennessee’s use of hostesses — students who are part of a university group that hosts prospective students on campus visits, including athletes. It was not clear whether the university sent the hostesses to visit the football players, the newspaper reported.
In one case, hostesses traveled nearly 200 miles to attend a football game at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., one of the nation’s best high school football programs, where at least three potential Tennessee recruits were playing, according to the report.
Two of Lattimore’s high school teammates, Brandon Willis and Corey Miller, have orally committed to Tennessee. Lattimore said the hostesses were “real pretty, real nice and just real cool” and thinks they had “a lot” of influence in his teammates making oral commitments, according to the report.
“I haven’t seen no other schools do that,” Lattimore said, according to the report. “It’s crazy.”
According to the article, Tennessee has committed at least six secondary NCAA violations since Lane Kiffin took over as head coach.
It might be hard to gather evidence in this situation outside of talking to the young recruits, but considering Tennessee has committed six violations one would assume that the NCAA is going to take their time investigating these “hostess” allegations.
Tennessee coach didn’t mind distinguishing between the two coaches, though he hesitated to predict a winner.
“It’s kind of hard to call,” Kiffin said Tuesday in an interview on WNML-AM in Knoxville. “There’s a bunch of great players on both teams. Florida has so much speed. I think you’ll see Alabama will outscheme Florida, and Florida has given up 28 sacks this year when a bunch of guys come free. But the problem is Superman (quarterback Tim Tebow) is back there. It comes down to can you tackle him.
“It will be a real interesting matchup. Florida has better players, and Alabama has better coaches, so we’ll see.”
The message her is clear. Kiffin thinks Urban Meyer is lucky to have Tim Tebow, and that without Tebow Meye and Florida football will come back down to Earth. You know he’s just waiting for the rematch where he gets to play Florida without Tim Tebow. Next year should be fun.
University of Tennessee football players Janzen Jackson, Nu’Keese Richardson and Mike Edwards were arrested on Wednesday night for an attempted robbery outside a convenience store near campus. Ironically, head coach Lane Kiffin had praised his team earlier in the day at a SEC coaches teleconference for not having any off-field incidents.
At least one of the players arrested was wearing some type of Tennessee gear during the attempted robbery, according to police.
A fourth suspect, a woman alleged to have been driving a car with the three players as passengers, was also arrested.
According to the police report, the victims of the robbery were in their car outside a Pilot convenience store, parked next to a Toyota Prius, when a black male approached wearing a hooded sweatshirt, brandishing what appeared to be a handgun, opened the driver’s side door and said “Give me everything you have.” A second black male also wearing a hooded sweatshirt then came around to the passenger side of the victims’ car, opened it and said, “Give us everything you’ve got.”
But when the victims opened their wallets and showed they had no money, a third black male approached the other two and said “we’ve got to go,” and all three got into the Prius and drove away, according to the police report.
Police said when they pulled over the Prius, they found a black air-powered pellet gun and a pair of hooded sweatshirts. Police also said they found a marijuana grinder, which the driver, Marie Montmarquet, said belonged to her, and a baggie containing what appeared to be marijuana in Montmarquet’s jacket.
According to police, the victims later identified Edwards and Richardson as the men who had approached them.
I wonder if this was just a hoax that went bad or if the players actually intended to rob the victims. I’m struggling to comprehend why three freshman football players would risk their careers and futures to rob somebody with a pellet gun but then again, these don’t seem to be the sharpest tools in the shed.
I find it mildly humorous that at least one of these geniuses was wearing Tennessee gear at the time of the attempted crime. Clearly these undeniable morons didn’t think this one through, which once again leads me to wonder if this just wasn’t a half-brained attempt at a joke.
Either way, it’s highly unlikely that these three play this weekend and there’s a real possibility that when more details emerge, Kiffin could kick them off the team for good. The fact that they’re all freshman could either hurt or help their chances of playing at UT in the future, depending on how you look at it.
What a stupid, stupid decision by these three players.
