USC Football: 11 People with a Grudge against Lane Kiffin

In a world as passionate as that of the swirling orb of college football it’s easy to hate certain individuals, teams or even entire states solely based on the color of their helmet, hat or t-shirt.

Ah yes…being a passionate lover and a zealous hater are just as much a part of being a college football fan as are touchdowns, beer coolers, screen passes, chicken wings and pancake blocks.

That said, it is rare to find an individual that is held in low esteem across the entire nation because as one of the critical laws of gridiron nature so states, “The object of every hater is in turn the object of a passionate lover.”

And this is held as an important truth even if the hater vs. lover ratio isn’t exactly equal.

To illustrate, Notre Dame has her fair share of loathers but, as the statute asserts, the Irish also have a large number of fervent devotees.

In the same vein but on an individual level Nick Saban has fan clubs and fanciful followers in the state of Alabama (with the huge exception of the Auburn folks) and so, naturally, he also has a hotbed of haters in other locales (some just so happen to be situated in tropical hot spots such as East Lansing Michigan and Baton Rouge Louisiana).

But, as every law of nature sometimes has an exception the football edict of haters and lovers has Lane Kiffin.

The youthful Coach Kiffin doesn’t just have a hater vs. lover ratio that’s out of whack; he has a difficult time keeping “likers” or “can standers” even among the ranks of his current “fan base.”

Kiffin and his coaching antics have left a wide swath of extreme dislike across the landscape of collegiate and professional football and it’s a distinctive brush stroke that has taken, relatively, a short time to apply to the gridiron canvas.

The following slideshow identifies 11 individuals, institutions and conclaves of people who hold a grudge against Lane Kiffin who we don’t so much “love to hate” but are almost forced “to dislike” based on the principal of the thing.

1. Al Davis

Oakland Raiders’ owner Al Davis hired Lane Kiffin as the Raiders new head coach in January of 2007 making the 31-year-old the youngest coach in NFL history (marking the first of many times the “youngest coach in XXXXX” phrase would be used in relation to Kiffin the Younger).

After leading the Raiders to a 4-7 finish in 2007 Davis purportedly attempted to force Kiffin to resign, an act he refused to go along with supposedly for financial reasons (while all this is completely understandable it is also completely speculative).

Kiffin remained employed by Oakland through the first four games of the 2008 season and was finally fired on September 30 when the Raiders record stood at a dismal 1-3.

After the firing Kiffin filed a complaint that the Raiders released him without cause, but this claim was ruled incorrect by an arbitrator who deemed the dismissal as “with cause.”

Interestingly, the Raiders legal team eventually stated that Lane Kiffin was fired for committing various NFL rules violations and making several false statements.

Though there are probably a plethora of reasons for Kiffin and Davis to have an equally amped up grudge against each other Kiffin continues to publicly berate Davis and the Raiders even though he’s two coaching positions down the road from his Oakland debacle.

As recently as a late August interview with ESPN.com, Kiffin had some unkind things to say about Davis who he contends is behind the times.

“It is almost impossible,” Kiffin said. “I don’t know why I didn’t listen, [because] so many people told me that. That’s why, if you ask [University of Washington coach Steve Sarkisian], he didn’t go. He had a chance to go. You’re just so far behind other clubs. You’re waiting for [Davis] to wake up and come to work at 2 o’clock in the afternoon to make decisions that the rest of the league is making at 6 o’clock in the morning. You’re still running videotapes over to the hotel so he can watch practice at night.”

2. The Entire State of Tennessee

Approximately two weeks after the arbitrator in Oakland deemed Kiffin’s firing to be “with cause” reports began to surface that Kiffin would be named the next head football coach at the University of Tennessee.

The word was official on the first day of December 2008 and Kiffin (now 33) became the youngest head coach actively working in the FBS ranks.

After leading the Vols to a 7-6 record in 2009 (including a 14-37 loss to Virginia Tech in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl) and creating several dramatic interludes in the SEC via bizarre accusations, Kiffin abruptly left  Jan. 12 2010 to take the head job at USC.

Kiffin’s departure came just three weeks prior to national signing day which was crucial as Kiffin (who had very effectively headed up recruiting while an assistant at USC) had managed to compile a very impressive class of signees that Rivals.com had ranked at No. 9 nationally.

Lane Kiffin had (as coaches do) made a pile of long-term promises to Volunteer fans who felt jilted by both his sudden departure for USC and the timing of his exodus that left Tennessee football in a precarious position (you could use dramatic terms such as “shambles” and be on target).

Indicative of Kiffin’s underwhelming support, a Jan. 13, 2010 article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that one Vol fan tweeted, “It’s like getting a divorce from a stripper.”

Tennessee wound up struggling to find a successor to Kiffin and eventually hired Derek Dooley who led the Volunteers to a bizarre 6-7 finish in 2010 that included wacky finishes in losses to LSU and North Carolina in the Music City Bowl.

The Volunteers took a further Kiffin related hit via NCAA violations that were supposedly committed during his short but very entertaining tenure in Knoxville.

The Tennessee fans rioted after Kiffin’s fled and long-term haters still have their own Facebook page.

3. Tom Cable

Tom Cable had been the offensive line coach at Oakland under Kiffin, and it was he who took the interim head coaching role for the Raiders in October of 2008 after Kiffin was canned by Davis.

After Kiffin took the Tennessee job, he began to put his own staff together in Knoxville and basically riled Cable up by poaching James Cregg of the Raiders staff with two weeks still yet to play in the NFL season.

Cregg was brought on as the offensive line coach at Tennessee and followed Kiffin to USC, where he currently serves in the same role.

Tom Cable purportedly deemed the timing of Cregg’s hiring as “wrong in the business of coaching,” and ironically after leaving the Raiders head job at the beginning of this year, he is now the offensive line coach at Seattle under former USC coach Pete Carroll.

4. Nick Saban

One of Kiffin’s key hires at Tennessee was nabbing Lance Thompson from Alabama less than a month prior to 2009’s National Signing day.

Thompson was thought by many to be the most effective recruiter on the Tide’s staff but it wasn’t enough for Kiffin to get him, he had to twist the knife a bit by making yet another inflammatory remark.

This dig came at a February 2009 recruiting event in Knoxville when Kiffin (along with Thompson) took a few cheap shots at Saban, “Nick Saban should have started his press conference (regarding the Tide’s signing class) by saying, ‘Our great class that we signed, I’d really like to thank Lance because Lance signed eight of those guys.'”

If that wasn’t enough Kiffin next made a remark about not being concerned about recruiting ratings after which Lance Thompson jumped in and added, “Just for your information, Utah had no 5-stars, and they kicked the lining out of our tails.”

This was obviously an unsavory reference to Alabama’s 17-31 loss to Utah in the Sugar Bowl which had happened just a month prior to the remarks.

Nice.

Lance Thompson is currently the defensive line coach at Tennessee.

5. Damon Evans

Damon Evans was the AD at Georgia from 2004-10 and was infuriated by Lane Kiffin’s remarks during a radio interview in 2009.

The Bulldogs had signed the top seven players in Georgia in 2009 and then nabbed 10 of the top 24 prospects out of the Peach state, leading Kiffin to purportedly question the soundness of their recruiting tactics.

Evans soundly defended the program's recruiting ethics, and the exchange of words made yet another national splash in the Kiffin verbal chronicles.

Kiffin further chaffed Evans and the Bulldogs by trying to lure successful recruiter and defensive line coach Rodney Garner from Athens, a coup that proved utterly unsuccessful.

Damon Evans was arrested for DUI in June of 2010 and subsequently stepped down from his position at the University of Georgia.

6. Urban Meyer and the University of Florida

Among the more infamous of Kiffin’s verbal missteps while employed at Tennessee was his calling out of Florida coach Urban Meyer at a Volunteer booster event in Knoxville in February of 2009.

Kiffin basically publicly accused Meyer of violating NCAA rules by contacting a recruit while he was on another campus.

“I’m going to turn Florida in right here in front of you, as Nu’Keese (Richardson) was here on campus, his phone keeps ringing.  And so one of our coaches is sitting in the meeting with him and says, ‘Who is that?’ And he looks at the phone and says, ‘Urban Meyer.’ Just so you know, you can’t call a recruit on another campus.  But I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn’t get him.”

Of course as things turned out Urban Meyer hadn’t committed an infraction but Kiffin had broken an SEC rule and made another enemy (not just with Meyer, but with the Gator fanbase).

7. The Staff at Pahokee High School

Unbelievably, Kiffin’s barb against the folks at Pahokee High School came in the same address where he publicly blasted Urban Meyer for cheating.

Pahokee, Florida is a gridiron hotbed and located west of Palm Beach on the sunny shores of Lake Okeechobee.

The Pahokee Blue Devils football team owns six state titles since 1989 and count several current NFL players as alumni.

At the time of Kiffin’s comments, Tennessee was in the process of signing Pahokee’s Nu’Keese Richardson, a 4-star rated wide receiver who was eventually dismissed from UT in November 2009 for being charged in relation to an alleged armed robbery.

During the Feb. 2009 speech, Kiffin stated that he had directed Richardson to fax his commitment letter from a location other than Pahokee High School because, “somebody at the school was going to screw it up, the fax machine wouldn’t work or they would have changed the signatures…all things that go on in Pahokee now.”

That might be the worst verbal offense in the bunch.

Richardson has been enrolled in three schools since leaving Tennessee, and as of April was attempting to enroll at Delta State in Cleveland, Mississippi.

8. The University of South Carolina

In yet another recruiting inspired insult, Chris Low of ESPN reported that Kiffin told Alshon Jeffery (who was then a 4-star recruit from St. Matthews, South Carolina), “If he chose the Gamecocks, he would end up pumping gas for the rest of his life like all the other players from that state who gone to South Carolina.”

Kiffin denied the remarks, but it was confirmed by Jeffery’s football coach, who was a part of the phone conversation.

9. Peyton Manning

Really, I don’t believe that Manning is a Kiffin hater, but it’s fairly logical to assert that he (as a loyal Volunteer alumnus) would at least have “a grudge” against Sir Lane and miffed by Kiffin’s departure from Tennessee.

From a 2010 interview with Dan Patrick (h/t Sports Radio Interviews):

“I don't have anything personal against him. But I think the one thing where Tennessee, as a whole group was kind of hurt, our pride was hurt, was that we didn't think that Tennessee was a transition job. … I've always thought and the big orange nation thought that Tennessee was a destination job. Unless you were fired or retired, that was the place to be.”

To Manning’s credit he wrapped up his comments on Kiffin by classily stating, “I wish Lane the best of luck there at Southern Cal and I'm sure he'll do a good job."

10. Dillon Baxter and Family

In the most recent mini drama involving Kiffin, sophomore running back Dillon Baxter and his family recently met with the coach regarding their disappointment over the amount of playing time he received in the Trojans’ season opener against Minnesota.

Baxter was a highly recruited 5-star all-purpose back out of San Diego who was part of the Trojan signing class of 2010.

Baxter’s beef was that he only participated in two plays in last Saturday’s narrow win over Minnesota while less game tested backs D.J. Morgan and Curtis McNeal combined for 24 carries, a situation that will be further complicated by the return of suspended senior back Marc Tyler for the Week 2 clash with Utah.

Though Baxter and family might hold a grudge against Kiffin, it is hard to use this as another reason to take a shot at the Trojans’ leader as how he handles personnel issues are the business of himself and his staff.

It’s difficult to hate on Kiffin when, in this case, he is simply doing his job.

11. The USC Offense and a Bunch of USC Fans

In an unfortunate statement made in the heat of the moment after last week's opener against Minnesota Kiffin told ESPN reporter Shelley Smith that the Trojans had “two good players on our offense” and had to “figure out the rest.”

This looked to be nothing more than assertion made out of frustration and perhaps was taken a little out of context in the re reporting of the episode, regardless the comment upset a bunch of Trojan fans and it would be logical to think that members of his offensive might have been offended as well.

Kiffin did apologize by saying that he did regret his specific remarks and explained himself by saying, “The question that was posed was, “What did you learn today?" And, really, what I had learned was that two guys had great games. But I didn't phrase it [the right way], and I told our offense that this morning too...I didn't mean it that way."

You have to give Coach Kiffin credit for his apology and his attempt to clarify what he said, but you can still see how his observations could have riled the USC faithful.

Regardless, Kiffin definitely has a knack for using his words as weapons, whether he intends to or not.