At Tennessee, the News Keeps Getting Worse

By now you've heard the news that Lane Kiffin bolted from a program he's been at only a year, but the sad news is that the Tennessee faithful are just now waking up with even more bad news.

It's one thing to wake up and find your wife's "Dear John" letter on the kitchen table with no previous hint of a problem, but then you find out that she took the checking and savings accounts as well as trying to convince the other family members to come along with her.

News comes this morning that Lane Kiffin had directed his fellow back stabber, Ed Orgeron, to contact the best of the recruiting class he'd assembled at Tennessee and tell them to not report for classes so they could bypass the transfer rule altogether and come with him to USC.

Tennessee administration officials found out what Orgeron was doing and had his university-issued cell phone turned off, but Kiffin and Orgeron were way ahead of them with a pocketful of other ones with the Tennessee recruits numbers on speed dial.

Recruits were putting their cell phones on speaker phone so everyone could hear Ed Orgeron tying to steal them away from Tennessee. He has also left an open invitation to current Vol players that he covets, to come to USC where they can REALLY shine.

If there's a lower form of coaching slime in America, I must have missed it.

Ok, Lane, I could almost get the fact that you used Tennessee as a stepping stone to get what you wanted, the big chair in the Pac-10, where you'll have far less competition for recruits and victories. Those not wearing orange saw this day coming when your name was announced as the new Volunteers' head coach.

But to try and gut the team that hired you and gave you that chance is lower than most of us thought you could ever sink. Do you honestly now expect any recruit to believe you when you talk about honesty, character, and integrity? I mean really?

Do you remember what punishment the football gods give out in karma? You could bomb out at USC in two years and be a totally unemployable 37-year old, dirt bag coach, a much younger version of Dennis Franchione.

I can only hope that when karma does catch up to you, it's just as public, just as embarrassing, and twice as costly as what you've done to this organization that gave you your big start in collegiate coaching.

Tennessee has three weeks left before national signing day. Their program is in shambles because the guy left running the football program has been on the job for all of one month. Yes Kippy Brown's been there before, during both Fulmer and Major's campaigns, and he has all the drawing power to recruits as that great old uncle who comes to family reunions and talks to himself during dinner.

As a writer who has an open bias and agenda for Alabama, it is gut-wrenching to see what happened in Knoxville and to know what they'll be playing through for the next year or two.

What Kiffin did to Knoxville doesn't sit well with many of us in the South, and he'll have no lack of vultures constantly circling the USC campus waiting to pick his bones over each mistake and miscue.

We in the South have a long memory Lane, and you should not forget it.