As the college football world navigates its way through the slowest of the slow part of the news cycle, we’ve wondered/hoped for in the past that somebody would stick a microphone/tape recorder/camera in Lane Kiffin‘s face 24/7 just in case.
Last year at around this time, Kiffin was burning bridges all across the SEC as he just simply couldn’t keep mouth shut. This year though, after moving from Tennessee to USC, Kiffin has been quiet. Too quiet, in our opinion.
Thanks to HBO’s Real Sports, however, we get a little insight into Kiffin’s decision to abruptly leave the Volunteers after just one season.
In an interview that will air this week, by way of the Knoxville News Sentinel, Kiffin will likely make no new friends in the Knoxville area given his feelings regarding the departure.
“I never once told any of those players I would be there forever,” Kiffin said. “I never made the statement ‘I was coming here; this is my dream job.’
“It’s part of the business. As they get older, they understand. That’s why they put buyouts in contracts.”
Believe it or not, we kinda, sorta have to side with Kiffin on this one, even as he likely could’ve framed his argument a wee bit better. Yeah, it’s really crappy when any coach stiffs his players and the program the way Kiffin did, but it’s not like he left UT for, say, Kansas or Illinois -- no offense to those two fine institutions.
He left for what he described as his dream job with the Trojans, and would likely still be with the Volunteers had Pete Carroll not decided to try his hand at the NFL game yet again. It was a crappy but understandable move.
Of course, all of this will likely do nothing to soothe the feelings of a jilted Volunteer nation, who burned couches and Kiffin t-shirts, and allegedly sent threatening messages such as “we want to eat your first born child” in the wake of Kiffin’s departure.
As an aside, who knew Mike Tyson was a UT fan?