Trash talk, mattress fires and a flying projector: Lane Kiffin's year at Tennessee
Team meetings at the Birmingham Marriott were winding down the night before Tennessee was set to take on top-ranked and unbeaten Alabama in 2009, and Ed Orgeron wanted everyone's attention.
To get the Vols pumped up, the fiery defensive line coach took an overhead projector and hurled it into a wall, where it shattered into pieces. Then it was Lane Kiffin's turn. The brash young head coach had an announcement.
"He gets up there and says, 'I've already called back to the University of Tennessee and told them that we're going to stay an extra night after we beat Alabama tomorrow, and we're going to go eat some of those Dreamland ribs and hang out at their bars,'" recounted Marlon Walls, then a freshman defensive lineman.
The whole room went wild, including Kiffin's father, Monte, the Vols' 69-year-old defensive coordinator.
"I believe Monte even picked up a chair and threw it," then-senior defensive lineman Wes Brown said. "Whatever we could get our hands on, we were throwing.
"It was total chaos."
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It was a fitting description of Kiffin's 14-month tenure in Knoxville, which saw the 34-year-old SEC newcomer in a league full of future Hall of Famers embrace his role as college football's biggest heel, taking on Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Steve Spurrier and just about anyone else. It was a season filled with big wins, humbling losses, constant controversy and one mini-riot.
The 2009 Vols flew high and crashed hard -- much like that overhead projector -- before Kiffin bolted after just one year for his dream job at USC. And they had a lot of fun along the way.
Ten years later, ESPN caught up with many of the key figures in what was one of the wildest, most entertaining 7-6 seasons in recent college football history.
'It's going to be a blast, so get ready'
Kiffin was talking a big game from the time he landed in Knoxville for his introductory media conference on Dec. 1, 2008. As part of his opening comments, he talked about embracing some of the great traditions at Tennessee.
Right there at the top, in his words, was "singing Rocky Top all night long after we beat Florida next year. It's going to be a blast, so get ready."
Never mind that the Gators had just won their second national championship in three years under Urban Meyer or had beaten the Vols by a combined 63 points the previous two seasons. Kiffin was hell-bent on instilling a different kind of edge with the Tennessee players and fan base.
"I remember thinking, 'Either this dude can coach ball, or we're going to get our heads beat in,'" said then-junior defensive end Chris Walker, now the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) director at Tennessee. "But that was the beauty of playing for Lane. He had a swag about him that was real and didn't mind stepping on toes."
Case in point: A few months after being named the Vols' coach, Kiffin appeared at a Tennessee recruiting breakfast in Knoxville (with television cameras present) and bragged about signing a prospect named Nu'Keese Richardson out of Pahokee, Florida, whom the Gators really wanted. Kiffin gloated, "I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn't get [Richardson]."
Kiffin was referencing Meyer making recruiting calls to Richardson while Richardson was visiting Tennessee, which Kiffin claimed was an NCAA violation. The only problem was that it wasn't a violation.
(Meanwhile, the NCAA committee on infractions found that during his year in Knoxville, Kiffin and his staff committed 12 minor violations, but the committee did not find enough evidence to support "findings of major violations." Kiffin did not face any sanctions.)
During that same breakfast, Kiffin told fans Nick Saban should thank UT defensive line coach Lance Thompson for Alabama's No. 2-ranked recruiting class that year because Thompson was one of the Tide's best recruiters before Kiffin persuaded him to join the Vols' staff.
"So much of that was me trying to give our players and our fans a reason to believe," Kiffin, now in his third season as Florida Atlantic's head coach, told ESPN last month. "If I was worried about Lane Kiffin, then you don't do any of that stuff because you're worried about your national image and worried about your next job, and I've never been that way. Maybe it hurt me from a national perspective and people's opinion of me, but it helped our team's confidence and helped us in recruiting."
Entire article:
https://www.espn.com/college-footba...s-flying-projector-lane-kiffin-year-tennessee
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