Kiffin won't rebound from rocky start
Posted: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 6:31 PM
After spending the last three months looking mighty shaky tooling around Knoxville on a set of SEC training wheels, Lane Kiffin, the pugnacious new kid on the block, has finally found the comfort of the football field.
Tuesday’s opening of spring practice at Tennessee didn’t come a moment too soon for the 33-year-old rookie college head coach. Being able to talk about his Volunteers and how they are shaping up for the 2009 season will be a welcomed departure from what has been an undeniably ugly offseason.
In the coming weeks, it will be refreshing to hear about who’s emerging at right guard to fill the massive cleats of Anthony Parker or how All-America free safety Eric Berry feels about the new defensive scheme, which figures to feature a lot of NFL-style “Tampa Two.”
Up until now, most everything emanating from Rocky Top has been at best rocky bottom.
Kiffin has seemingly spent every moment since being hired on Dec. 1, digging a monstrous hole for himself. Guaranteeing victory over Florida was one of the first things he did. Gutsy, yes. Smart, no.
He followed that up by falsely accusing Urban Meyer of a recruiting violation. A stern reprimand by the SEC and a public apology from Kiffin were next. Alabama and Georgia also felt the affect of the first stages of Hurricane Lane.
Then, came his own trio of recruiting violations. Minor infractions, but legit nonetheless.
Lots of news. None of it positive.
Kiffin and his supporters are saying it's all part of the plan. We don’t buy it.
Continually screwing up is not how to start a new job, I don’t care how you spin it and if some people are actually foolish enough to believe that this is a well-planned campaign to burst upon the scene.
Guess what, Tennessee was already on the scene. Say what you want about Phillip Fulmer, who won the first BCS national title in 1998 and captured the SEC East four times since then (most recently all the way back in 2007), but the Volunteers are not a fixer-upper. Tennessee is in no way a program that should be stooping to garner all the “at least they spelled our name right” publicity it can get.
And because of this ignominious start, there is probably no end in sight. Kiffin has spent so much time with both feet in his mouth that he’s now under an incredibly intense microscope. From now on you can expect regular doses of reports about him -- good, bad or indifferent -- in the mainstream and blogosphere. He’s now the Britney Spears of college football.
The latest allegations contend that he told a recruit from South Carolina, who chose the Gamecocks over Tennessee and Southern California, that he would “end up pumping gas for the rest of his life, like everyone else who played for South Carolina.” Kiffin flatly denied that he ever said that.
No word yet on if he will call the player in question, wide receiver Alshon Jeffery, and his high school coach, Walter Wilson, liars. Reportedly they were both listening to Kiffin’s last-ditch effort via a speakerphone, along with another high school football player.
Assuming that there is at least some truth to the rude prediction, perhaps attributed to a combination of youthful inexperience and pressure to succeed, it’s interesting to consider what would have happened if Jeffery told Kiffin that he was going to the West Coast USC and not the East Coast one.
How would the former Southern California assistant coach have played that hand? You wouldn’t think that he’d lash into the Trojans and his mentor Pete Carroll. But who really knows with this guy?
Making waves is nothing new to Kiffin. He did lots of that during his brief tenure as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders. Of course, those stormy seas up in the Bay Area weren’t entirely of his own making, but he certainly did his share to rock the Raider boat.
Al Davis is as wacky as they come, but he did make some points that are worth debating. We won’t do that here, but it is crystal clear that the Raiders were a complete failure on the field.
So, the questions have to be asked. What exactly fuels this arrogance? What has Kiffin really done to deserve this lofty post? What was Tennessee thinking?
Advocates will state that he did a great job at USC and is the next “Pete Carroll.” USC was a juggernaut when Kiffin served as an assistant coach there. That is certainly true. However, when he was promoted to become the Trojan offensive coordinator for two seasons (2005-06), there were costly missteps.
Lost amid the stunning brilliance of Vince Young and the dramatic ending of the 2006 Rose Bowl/BCS title game, was USC’s utterly inept showing on crucial short-yardage plays from the first quarter to the final minutes. Either choosing to be too cute with play calls or too stubbornly arrogant to use Matt Leinart, LenDale White and Reggie Bush in the backfield at the same time, the Trojans lost the ball on downs one too many times.
Eleven months later, in the same Pasadena location, the Trojans needed only to beat a beleaguered 6-5 UCLA team in the regular-season finale to advance to another BCS title game. But Kiffin’s offense laid a gargantuan egg, not even breaking into double-digits in an embarrassing 13-9 loss to the Bruins. (And then, of course, Florida went on to slaughter Ohio State for the crystal football instead of the Trojans.)
One can understand the desire to hire “the next Pete Carroll,” but let’s remember that Carroll had actual accomplishments on his resume before lucking out and finding his comfort zone at USC. A winning record as an NFL head coach (33-31), along with six seasons as a highly-respected defensive coordinator, isn’t shabby.
Perhaps more importantly, Carroll -- and all the other head coaches in the country -- knows how to behave.
The Vols will find out the hard way. But that will ultimately come in a year or two. At least for now, we have spring football to obscure the weekly foibles of Lane Kiffin.
Or do we?
Stay tuned.
