Smack Bowl '09: Talk Gives Way to Game Week for Spurrier, Kiffin

It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In the run-up to a Halloween night showdown between Tennessee and No. 21 South Carolina in Knoxville (7:45 p.m., ESPN), you figure it's only a matter of time before one coach or the other launches a verbal grenade at the other team. You don't know which coach it's going to be, or what they're going to say. You just know it's coming.

Tennessee's Lane Kiffin and South Carolina's Steve Spurrier are the SEC's mouthiest football coaches. Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for them to get acquainted once Kiffin arrived in the South fresh off the West Coast.

In fact, Spurrier had set his sights on Kiffin before Kiffin had time to draw down on his first fellow SEC coach. The flash bulbs had barely stopped popping at Kiffin's introductory press conference in Knoxville Dec. 1 when the Ol' Ball Coach insinuated that Kiffin might have violated a recruiting rule.

"You’re supposed to have passed the NCAA test and be on board, I think. But maybe he was just calling him as an interested observer," Spurrier said of Kiffin calling a recruit the previous day. "I don’t know. But technically to be able to recruit you’re supposed to pass the NCAA test."

Spurrier was wrong, as it turned out; Kiffin had taken, and passed, his test. And, in a sign of things to come, he wasn't shy about letting Spurrier know it.

"If Steve's concerned about my test, I got a 39 out of 40," Kiffin said. "I'd like to see what he got."

And the feud was off and running.

Kiffin allegedly told South Carolina recruit Alshon Jeffery later that Jeffery would wind up "pumping gas" for a living if he signed with the Gamecocks. Kiffin has repeatedly and vehemently denied making the statement.

The new Tennessee coach also swiped two members of Spurrier's staff. David Reaves, Spurrier's recruiting coordinator, left Columbia to join his brother-in-law in Knoxville. Kiffin also lured Spurrier's long-time strength and conditioning coordinator, Mark Smith, to Knoxville. That hire didn't work out, and Smith soon parted ways with the Vols.

Spurrier's fondness for one-liners began when he was winning SEC championships at Florida. He nicknamed former Georgia coach Ray Goff, Ray "Goof." And he nicknamed in-state rival Florida State "Free Shoes University," in the wake of a recruiting scandal at FSU. He told students at a pep rally before Florida's meeting with Auburn in 1991 that a fire on Auburn's campus had tragically burnt the library and destroyed all 20 books, adding, "Fifteen hadn't been colored yet."

But Spurrier had a special penchant for needling Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer. After Florida defeated the Vols 31-0 in 1994, Spurrier responded to Fulmer's pregame assertion that Tennessee had little chance to win the game. "Phil wanted to tell everybody the Gators have had the best personnel over the last four or five years, which is a good little cop-out for coaches who are not winning," Spurrier said. He later apologized for the comment.

After Tennessee's second consecutive berth in the Citrus Bowl—which matches the second-best SEC team with the second-best Big Ten team—two years later, Spurrier quipped that "you can't spell Citrus without U-T." Later, Spurrier joked that Tennessee quarterback Peyton Manning opted to return for his senior season in Knoxville because "he wanted to be a three-time Citrus Bowl MVP."

The barbs didn't stop when Spurrier returned to the SEC after an unsuccessful stint in the NFL. After several of Fulmer's players were involved in brushes with the law, Spurrier was quick to give his take on the situation.

But in Kiffin, the SEC might finally have a coach who can get under Spurrier's skin. Unlike Fulmer, who responded to Spurrier's verbal jabs with silence, Kiffin has refused to back down from the Ol' Ball Coach.

At the conference's spring meetings in Destin, Fla., Kiffin was asked about his accusation that Florida's Urban Meyer had violated a recruiting rule (he was later reprimanded by the SEC and apologized to Florida). Kiffin invoked Spurrier's December comments.

"I’m still waiting for coach Spurrier’s apology for calling me out on the first day I was there, saying I didn’t take my test," Kiffin said. "I haven’t gotten that yet, either."

That appeared to draw the ire of Spurrier, who confronted Kiffin at an elevator bank inside the Sandestin Hilton.

"I didn’t accuse you of cheating," Spurrier told Kiffin. "I said, 'Is it permissible to call recruits before he’s announced as head coach, before you take the test?'"

Spurrier is basically quibbling over semantics. He may have been a bit more diplomatic in his verbal barb at Kiffin than Kiffin was at Meyer, but only slightly so.

The truth is that if Kiffin had made some of the same remarks about his foes that Spurrier has made over the course of his career, he would have been barbecued by the national sports media.

Perhaps Spurrier gets a free pass because he's walked the walk. Or perhaps it's because the bulk of his comments were made in a different era of SEC football; the Ol' Ball Coach has been relatively silent since failing to match his Florida success in South Carolina.

But the truth is that Spurrier and Kiffin were cut from the same cloth. Both are calculated in their comments, and look to exploit the weaknesses of their opponents with their gift of gab (or propensity for inserting foot into mouth, as the case may be).

Consider their comments in the aftermath of losses to Alabama on back-to-back Saturdays.

Following the Gamecocks' 20-6 loss to Alabama, Spurrier accused Alabama of violating an NCAA rule by using tape to spot place kicks.

"I thought you just had to put it on the ground. But they had a little piece of white tape or something, and I looked at it on tape and I said, 'What's that little piece of white there?' Then after the guy kicked it he grabbed it and put it back in his pocket," Spurrier said. He also filed a formal complaint with the SEC.

A week later, Kiffin opted against running an additional play in the final 40 seconds of Tennessee's 12-10 loss to Alabama, settling instead for a 44-yard field goal attempt, which was blocked by the Tide's Terrence Cody.

"You run another play and you throw an interception or they throw another flag on us. I wasn't going to let the refs lose the game for us there and some magical flag appear," Kiffin explained following the game.

South Carolina fans won't like their coach being compared to Kiffin. Tennessee fans may not like their coach being compared to Spurrier. But when it comes to their fondness for smack talk, the two couldn't be more similar.

Fans familiar with either coach might tell you it's no surprise that neither camp has had much to say in the run-up to Saturday's showdown at Neyland Stadium. Both coaches love to talk; both are also business-like in their gameday preparation.

But if history has taught us anything about these two characters, the civil silence probably won't last long after the conclusion of Saturday's game. To the victor will go the spoils...and a few inevitable verbal jabs at his opponent.