Lane Kiffin, Tennessee Just Following Protocol

This will be my final article about Lane Kiffin. I am tired of talking about him as much as many of you are tired of hearing about him. That’s an amazing statement coming from a Tennessee Vols fan.
 
That’s especially true when you consider the majority of the articles written about him on this site are from opposition fans.
 
We’ve heard it all from how Lane’s digging his own grave, to how classless he is, and how he’s already on the hot seat in Knoxville. 
 
Now one could reasonably consider that Lane Kiffin brought it all on himself. One could reasonably argue that Kiffin’s mouth was what landed him on the top of the "most hated SEC coaches" list before he ever called a down.
 
This reasonable Tennessee fan would logically agree with that point. I’ve even grown tired of his mouth from time to time. However, once I considered the master plan, and  saw the top 10 recruiting class along with the No. 1 recruit in the nation that Kiffin brought to Knoxville in two short months, I was sold. 
 
When the anti-Vol doubters can no longer argue with that point, they look to the minor recruiting violations that have been committed since Kiffin took the helm of the UT ship.

They leave out the fact that thousands of these violations are self-reported every season, and that there’s hardly a school in the FBS Division that does not have some minor violation at some point during the year. 
 
But what I really wanted to address with this final Lane Kiffin piece before his hopefully illustrious UT coaching career officially begins, is the hypocrisy that these anti-Vols or Vol-haters, if you will, have shown over the last seven months or so.

The biggest hypocrisy I see is that most of these fans from other SEC schools did not seem to mind when their schools sold their souls to the devil to win a championship.
 
Like or not Bama fans, Tennessee hired a guy like Lane Kiffin because just four short years ago, Bama hired Nick Saban.
 
Nick Saban, the man that repeatedly lied about having no interest in the Alabama coaching job. The same St. Nick that has left every single job he’s ever had once he became the least bit successful. AD Mal Moore wanted another Bear, and what he got was a lying mercenary coach who will take the Tide to the top within the next two or three years and then leave them in the dust for the next big thing—probably another stint in the NFL.
 
But hey, what do you care as long as your team gets that ring?
 
The Florida Gators hired a slick, young coach who had been successful in smaller conferences to take them back to the glory days. So what if he has to win without class. So what if he can’t handle a single criticism thrown his way. So what if he bolts for Notre Dame after this season, he’s won two championships and is ready for a run at a third!
 
What about the coach who started it all for the Gators? Steve Spurrier was never the epitome of class. He was always about winning! That’s one reason Phillip Fulmer could hardly ever beat him! Fulmer always tried to do things the right way, without selling out. If you haven’t noticed, that no longer works in big time sports!
 
This is exactly why Alabama quit hiring assistant coaches and famous coach’s sons to resurrect their fledgling program! That program was on the brink of becoming completely irrelevant again when Mike Shula was unceremoniously fired. Then the boosters finally paid a coach rather than the players and voila, Bama has a program again.
 
Ron Zook was driving the Florida program into the ground. Then they hire Urban Meyer and he takes the same players that Zook couldn’t win nine games with and wins a national title!
 
Look, I’m not saying whether it’s right or wrong. I’m saying that Tennessee finally did what Florida and Alabama did almost half a decade ago. They finally understood that college football is gigantic business with gigantic dollars and they decided something had to be done with a coaching staff that was stuck in the 90’s in recruiting, scheming, and mentality.

College football is no longer a sport for the nice guys such as Fulmer. It now takes a me-first mentality to coach in major college football, especially in the SEC. As a matter of fact, when Fulmer was carried off the field on his November Saturday night at Neyland Stadium, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I even uttered the words, "What have we done?"

Ultimately though we’re fans. We root for our teams. We live and die with every play!

Do you think it matters to us that our coach has a big mouth as long as we’re getting top recruits? Do you honestly think that we actually give a flip that our coach has ruffled more feathers in seven months than Phillip Fulmer did in 16 years? Do you think we will care how Kiffin got these recruits if the Vols win an SEC or National Title in the next five years?
 
The simple answer to that is no. College football fans want to see their teams compete. Phillip Fulmer could no longer do that, so AD Mike Hamilton went out and got some young, new blood to take Fulmer’s place.
 
Just as Jeremy Foley did five years ago with Urban Meyer, and just as Mal Moore did four years ago with Nick Saban. And before you argue that those guys had proven track records when they were hired, I agree 100 percent. That is a completely true statement.

That statement alone should show you why Lane Kiffin did what he did, why he said what he said. The deck was stacked against him coming in to the strongest conference in the land, with the best coaches and best talent in America. So to get some publicity and get some free air time into a recruit’s house, he created a stir.
 
I am as old school as it gets when it comes to winning with class and dignity. I have always hated the bush-league, look at me tactics of some athletes and schools. I will be the first to say, however, that if Kiffin’s style gets Tennessee back in the national landscape; if his style gets UT an SEC or a national championship, who cares about dignity and class?
 
You think Urban Meyer cares about such things when he takes that three million dollar check to the bank? Nick Saban couldn’t care less about minor things like loyalty. It’s about winning. It’s about making millions. College football is no longer about school pride, fight songs, or camaraderie; it’s about championships and making a name.
 
So we sold our big orange souls to the devil. So we sold out to the win-now-mania that is ruining major sports. So we no longer have a classy program that everyone can look up to. So what?! At least we were the last to do so.