When I say “sexiest woman alive,” I know what you think — Lane Kiffin.  Right?

I’ll allow others to jump all over this one.  It’s just too easy.  But I will give you the details.  Esquire magazine posted a 16-person bracket for folks to vote for the Sexiest Woman Alive.  Oddly enough, one of the 16 choices was none other than the former Tennessee football coach.

We’ll let EverydayShouldBeSaturday.com… and CollegeFootballTalk.com… and The Huffington Post take it from there.

Here’s my only question: Is it possible to commit a secondary violation while competing for the title of sexiest woman alive?  If so, the judges better keep their eyes on Kiffin.

If you were under the impression that no one on God’s green earth had discussed the possibility of Tennessee receiving a sixth seed in the NCAA tournament… then you clearly didn’t see The Sports Source this past Sunday morning.

Not only did the panel warn about a potential six seed, they also listed San Diego State as one of the potential opponents that Tennessee should hope to avoid.

Here are the clips.  And, of course, we now know that Tennessee did land a six seed in the Midwest Region in Providence and will face SDSU.



SEGMENT ONE (Parts A & B) — Quick points about Derek Dooley’s decision to recruit character guys and Bruce Pearl’s lack of offensive weaponry.





SEGMENT TWO — Four “Take It Or Leave It” questions about SEC basketball and Tennessee football.



SEGMENT THREE — Three issues to watch during UT’s spring practice.



SEGMENT FOUR — Here’s our discussion of a potential six seed for the Vols.



SEGMENT FIVE — In this segment, we looked at the 30 teams (at the time) that UT might wind up playing in the tourney… and yes, the list did include SDSU.



SEGMENT SIX — Comparing the statistics/styles of the teams that beat Tennessee this year, there is a profile for what gives UT trouble.  And San Diego State fits that profile.



SEGMENT SEVEN — Our picks for where the Vols would be seeded.

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Three years ago, Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl said that he wasn’t interested in the head coaching job at Iowa.  Now the former Hawkeye assistant might be contacted by Iowa again.

Yesterday, Iowa fired Todd Lickliter after his third losing season in as many years.  The former Butler coach had taken over in Iowa City after Steve Alford departed for New Mexico.

According to The Daily Iowan — that’s the campus newspaper — “one of the most popular candidates among the fan base” is Pearl.  Pearl was an assistant in Iowa for six seasons under Tom Davis.  His assistants in Knoxville all have ties back to Iowa.

Interestingly, while an Iowa assistant Pearl’s 1988 decision to record a conversation with a recruit and turn it in to the NCAA in as proof that Illinois was cheating, led to his being unofficially blackballed in the coaching community.  Pearl had to work his way up slowly via the Division II route.

Iowa athletic director Gary Barta was asked if Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany might get involved in the search if it led to Pearl. 

“Jim Delany is very knowledgeable about the game of basketball.  He doesn’t have any say in who we hire, but I definitely will include him and many others as I go through this process.”

The fact that folks are discussing all of this just goes to show how far ahead of the pack — at least in fan/media minds — Pearl is.

Pearl flirted with Memphis last year after John Calipari left, securing raises for his assistants as well as helping his own cause.  It’s doubtful that Pearl would leave Knoxville just one year later to take on a program that has suffered three straight losing seasons and a steady decline in fan support.

If Pearl were going to leave Knoxville, Memphis would have made more sense because it is quite simply an easier job than Iowa (or Tennessee).  But UT’s coach chose to stay in Knoxville.  And three years ago he said he wasn’t interested in Iowa.  It’s unlikely that he’s changed his mind on either front.

Then again, stranger things have happened.

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NASHVILLE – Tennessee suffered a Music City Meltdown on Saturday afternoon in Bridgestone Arena.
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Ever heard the old line “survive and advance?”  Here’s guessing you’ll hear it from Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl during his postgame press conference.

After a sluggish, boring game this afternoon, his Volunteers have advanced to the second round of the SEC tournament with a 59-49 win over LSU in Nashville.

Until late in the game, the two teams had combined for more turnovers than made field goals.  Think about that for a second.

For the Tigers, the loss ends a frustrating season at 11-20.  It was the 17th time in 31 games that LSU has failed to reach the 60-point plateau. 

The Vols (24-7) survived their tussle with the league’s worst squad and they will face a rested Ole Miss team tomorrow during the afternoon session.

Needless to say, UT will have to play much better tomorrow if they want to slide past the Rebels… who come into the tourney with a four-game win streak.

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1.  Tournament history isn’t on the side of teams that finish with records as bad as LSU’s.

2.  To spring an upset on Tennessee, the Tigers will need to get good guard play.

3.  Trent Johnson says of his team, “It’s just unfortunate that with this team this year, the uglier the game is, the more it gives us a chance to win.”

4.  Tennessee hasn’t won the SEC tournament since 1979.

5.  The Volunteers say they’re focused on LSU and LSU only right now.

6.  This writer says Bruce Pearl is more interested in promoting his program than himself.

7.  Pearl made the most of a bad situation in Knoxville this season.

GAME TWO
Thursday, 3:15pm ET
SEC Network


East #3 Seed — Tennessee
Overall Record:  23-7
SEC Record:  11-5
Current Streak:  Won 3
Last 8 Games:  5-3
RPI:  13
SOS:  22
Top 50 RPI Wins:  Memphis, Kansas, Kentucky
Losses Outside Top 100 RPI:  Southern Cal
2pt Shots (% of Total Points):  57.4%
3pt Shots (% of Total Points):  24.0%
Free Throws (% of Total Points):  18.6%
Bench Minutes (% of Total Minutes):  41.5%
Playing For:  Probably a #4 seed currently, Tennessee still might be able to land a #3 seed in the NCAAs with a good showing in Nashville


West #6 Seed — LSU
Overall Record:  11-19
SEC Record:  2-14
Current Streak:  Won 1
Last 8 Games:  2-6
RPI:  222
SOS:  93
Top 50 RPI Wins:  None
Losses Outside Top 100 RPI:  Washington State, Utah, Arkansas, Auburn (twice)
2pt Shots (% of Total Points):  57.3%
3pt Shots (% of Total Points):  22.3%
Free Throws (% of Total Points):  20.4%
Bench Minutes (% of Total Minutes:  28.3%
Playing For:  The Tigers only hope for extending their season is a tournament championship


Previous Meeting:  Tennessee 59, LSU 54 in Baton Rouge on February 4th


Fast Facts:  The Volunteers use more minutes off their bench than any team in the SEC.  LSU is near the bottom of the league.  If UT gets off to a hot start — as it did against Mississippi State on Saturday — the Vols can wear down the Tigers.  LSU just doesn’t have the offensive ability to mount big, big comebacks.  If Tennessee starts slow, the Tigers could gain confidence and hang with the Vols… as they did in the teams’ previous meeting.


Edge:  LSU gave Tennessee a good game last month in Baton Rouge.  It’s unlikely, however, that a team that won 2 of 16 conference games during the regular season can knock off the third best team in the conference.  Barring a huge upset, the Vols advance.

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STARKVILLE, Miss. — Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl said Saturday represented the best basketball his team has played this season. He wouldn’t get any arguments from Mississippi State. The 16th-ranked Vols raced out to a 17-0 lead and were never seriously threatened en route to a 75-59 victory over the Bulldogs in Humphrey Coliseum on Saturday night.
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There will be memories abound for both Mississippi State and Tennessee tonight in Humphrey Coliseum in Starkville, Miss.
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Last week, Tennessee announced that new football coach Derek Dooley will be paid $1.8 million this year as part of his six-year contract with the school.

But while Dooley has signed the dreaded “memo of understanding,” Jimmy Hyams of Knoxville radio station WNML-AM reports that there’s still a hang-up over the buyout clauses in the actual contract.

At issue is the buyout that Dooley would have to pay UT should he decide to split town ahead of schedule, a la Lane Kiffin. 

Tennessee wants a stiffer penalty than the $800,000 buyout it gave Kiffin.  Dooley and his agent Jimmy Sexton don’t want the buyout to be too high.

Sexton has made it clear that he doesn’t believe that Dooley should be punished — not sure how someone making $1.8 million a year is being punished — for something that Kiffin did.

Of course, Sexton also represented Kiffin, so perhaps athletic director Mike Hamilton should simply say, “We’re not punishing Dooley… we’re punishing YOU.”

Having rushed into its deal with Dooley back in January — the two parties met on a Thursday and the coach was hired on Friday — UT has given the leverage to Dooley and Sexton.

As a friend of mine said yesterday, it’s hard to get the bride to sign the pre-nup AFTER the marriage.

Also of interest is the fact that Knoxville-media asked Dooley at his opening presser if he might have eyes for any other jobs.  Say… one to the south where his Papa once coached?  Dooley said, of course, that he planned to be at Tennessee for a long time.

So why the hang-up on the buyout?  Maybe it’s all standard agent haggling, but a fanbase that’s rightfully leery of quick-skedaddling coaches probably would prefer to hear that Dooley has already inked his contract.  And that he isn’t worried about the buyout clause.

John Calipari heaped praise on Tennessee. He also came away feeling not so bad about his own team Saturday afternoon.
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Kentucky didn’t want Scotty Hopson when he was coming out of high school, but Hopson wanted the Wildcats on Saturday afternoon.
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KNOXVILLE — A win today would do so much for the Tennessee men’s basketball team.
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The University of Tennessee is strengthening its drug policy as of July 1st… just three years after loosening it.

In 2007, UT followed several other SEC schools in moving to a four-strikes-and-you’re-out drug testing policy IF one of the strikes was for marijuana.

Weed has become so prevalent among athletes that schools across the country have been adjusting their testing policies to cope.

But after three football players were arrested in November for attempted armed robbery (pot was found in their car) and four basketball players were arrested on New Year’s Day for various charges (again, with pot in their car), Tennessee is going back to its old three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy.

In January, athletic director Mike Hamilton said, “There’s a pretty strong record if someone makes it to the third step, they are going to end up being dismissed.  Very few are able to back.”

Now that third step will once again lead to an automatic dismissal from the team.

Tennessee is also working on creating a gun policy for its athletes, but a UT spokesperson says there are legal issues at play in that area.

Southern Cal coach Lane Kiffin conducted his first interview with The Knoxville News Sentinel post-departure yesterday and he didn’t even take a single potshot at the school, the fans, the band, the mascot or anything else.

In fact, Kiffin said he was surprised last month to hear athletic director Mike Hamilton refer to him as a bad fit culturally.

“I don’t really know exactly what that means.  I don’t think at the end of the day that has anything to do with whether you score points or whether you win games.  Where you’re from?  I don’t know.  That’s just my opinion.

“Is Nick Saban from Alabama?  Is Urban Meyer from Florida?  Those are two of the best coaches in the country.  So I don’t think that really means anything.”

Urban Meyer is one of the best coaches in the country?  Okay, so who kidnapped the real Kiffin?

On other topics, Kiffin said:

* He was “put in a tough situation timingwise” with the USC job.

* He doesn’t believe brother-in-law and former UT quarterbacks coach David Reaves — who he did NOT take with him to LA — knew ahead of time that two Tennessee hostesses would be making a much-publicized off-campus visit to a pair of recruits… which still might land the Vols in hot water with the NCAA.

* Death threats towards his family have almost stopped.  “We still get an occasional fax or a message sent this way.”

The former Vol coach also said that UT was better post-Kiffin than it was post-Phillip Fulmer.  “I know this: From the day I got there to the day that we left, that roster was drastically better than it was.  Really at the end of the day, that’s my job as a head coach, is to improve the roster and improve what the kids are doing in the classroom.  And we did that as well.”

For those of you who watch “The Sports Source” online, I’m sorry I’m just now getting it posted.

Below you’ll find the complete show from this past Sunday.



SEGMENT ONE –



SEGMENT TWO (Parts A and B) –




SEGMENT THREE –



SEGMENT FOUR –



SEGMENT FIVE –



SEGMENT SIX –



SEGMENT SEVEN –

Tennessee’s deal with new football coach Derek Dooley is finally done… and it’s a long one in terms of new coaches.

Dooley has agreed to a six-year deal worth $1.8 million per year.  It’s somewhat unusual for new coaches’ contracts to go longer than five years.  It will be interesting to see the buy-out information for Dooley should he decide to head off for another school.

“In the few short weeks working with coach Dooley, it is evident that he is going to do a tremendous job as coach at the University of Tennessee,” athletic director Mike Hamilton.  That’s a pretty confident statement considering Hamilton’s last hire stuck around Knoxville for just one season.

Tennessee also announced the contracts for the rest of their staff which includes a three-year deal worth $600,000 per season for defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox.  Jim Chaney, Charlie Baggett and Lance Thompson all received three-year deals as well.

The remaining UT coaches received two-year contracts.

The total package comes in at $800,000 cheaper than last year’s staff made as a whole. 

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Bobby Maze matched his season high with 16 points and No. 20 Tennessee reached 20 victories for the fifth straight season with a 63-55 win over South Carolina on Saturday.
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Maybe the rock wall is about to give way. At least there are more cracks showing lately.
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Lane Kiffin has done it again.  The new coach at Southern Cal opened up about his move from Tennessee to the West Coast on ESPN yesterday… and many Vol fans didn’t like the message he sent.

In trying to explain his love for USC and his desire to return to the Trojans, Kiffin launched what some UT fans believe to be backhands at the Vols.

For example, when asked what advice his father, Monte, gave him during the Tennessee-to-USC decision, Kiffin said, “Well, when I mentioned it to him he said, ‘Where’s the airplane?  Let’s go.’”

Kiffin also said that for the people on his UT staff that had come from USC “it was a very easy decision” to return to LA from Knoxville.

None of that has been too well-received by Volunteer fans.

But knowing I’ll get angry emails from those folks (yesterday it was Mississippi State fans… who’s on deck for tomorrow?), take a look at what Kiffin said about the over-the-top fan reaction to his departure.

Asked about the worst part of the firestorm, Kiffin said, “I just think the wife, you know, being at the house and the death threats and all the messages sent there and then the posting of her cell phone and home address and having to have three cops outside there that night.  That… I’m okay, you know.  Doesn’t bother me, but that was kinda tough.”

I think, if my wife and family had received death threats from moronic fans, I too would have little positive to say about a place.  I’m not defending Kiffin’s decision to call Tennessee’s early enrollees, but for the most part, many UT students and fans did go way over the line in their response to Kiffin’s departure. 

Kiffin said of the South’s love of football, “It is more passionate and it’s followed 365 days a year.  And so I think that had a lot to do with the reaction down there… where I think people here understand that there’s a lot more going on and they weren’t burning couches when Coach Carroll left, you know?”

Kiffin will always be viewed as a villain in Knoxville — an odd end since so many UT fans defended him against 11 other fanbases who immediately picked up on his bad vibes.  But Tennessee fans should remember that they played a role in L’affaire Kiffin, too. 

Threatening a man’s wife and family over a decision to return to his dream job is both pea-brained and ugly.  Therefore, I wouldn’t expect Kiffin or the Vol Nation to have much good to say about one another in the years to come.

Here are the clips from this past Sunday’s television show, “The Sports Source,” which airs weekly on WATE-TV in Knoxville.

The show features a number of Knoxville media members as well as former Vol player and coaches.  Former UT basketballer Dane Bradshaw took part in the conversation this week.

Also, with former Tennessee quarterback Peyton Manning having played in the Super Bowl the week before, the panel discusses Manning’s rank amongst the all-time great QBs.

Here goes…



SEGMENT ONE (parts A and B) — A discussion of Tennessee basketball following the Vols loss to Kentucky





SEGMENT TWO — “Take It or Leave It” questions about the Vols’ basketball team and UT’s new defensive coordinator



SEGMENT THREE — A look at the NCAA tournament resumes around the SEC



SEGMENT FOUR — We reveal a mathematical formula we used to rank the best NFL quarterbacks of all-time



SEGMENT FIVE — We reveal how the rankings turned out and where Manning is currently positioned



SEGMENT SIX — But who’s the best QB of all-time in our views?



SEGMENT SEVEN — How will Tennessee do against Georgia and South Carolina?

After spending several months rehabbing a damaged knee, Tennessee receiver Austin Rogers finally decided that UT officials were correct in telling him a sixth year of eligibility was unlikely.

He decided to start working toward Tennessee’s pro day workouts next month in hopes of impressing NFL scouts.

That’s why he had to pass on the Vols when in December they discovered that he probably WOULD be granted a hardship year by the NCAA.

It’s a strange end to the career of a young man whose July 2009 knee injury kept him from fulfilling a lifelong dream of playing last season with his brother, Zach, a freshman receiver.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — At a roaring Rupp Arena on Saturday night, Eric Bledsoe and John Wall made the loud plays and DeAndre Liggins the quiet ones as No. 3 Kentucky silenced No. 12 Tennessee 73-62.

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LEXINGTON, Ky. – Tennessee battled Kentucky even through the first 30 minutes before hitting a wall. Wildcats freshman sensation John Wall heated up late, scoring 12 of his game-high 24 points during the final 10 1/2 minutes to lead No. 3-ranked Kentucky to a 73-62 victory over No. 12 Tennessee on Saturday night in Rupp Arena.
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When John Calipari left Memphis to become Kentucky’s coach, one thing he didn’t have to leave behind was important matchups against Tennessee.
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