More Intrigue At Tennessee — New Strength Coach Booted?
May 22nd, 2009 ║ Posted By: John Pennington ║ Permalink ║ Tags: Tennessee
Chris Low of ESPN.com is reporting that Lane Kiffin and new strength coach Mark Smith — who left South Carolina for Tennessee in December — have agreed to part ways.
(The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that Smith’s authority has only been weakened and he is on something of a double-secret probation. Their story came out before ESPN.com’s.)
Tennessee made no official comments as of late last night. Not on the latest surprise move, at least.
Earlier in the evening athletic director Mike Hamilton had said how much be backed his new hire.
“He has gotten Tennessee back on the map. When you think about the fact that our football program was 5-7 last year, and we’ve got a coach that’s not coached a game yet in college football, but yet, we’re on the front page of USA Today sports… it’s really quite amazing.”
Yes, but most of the press Kiffin has received has been negative.
Negative comments about other coaches. Negative comments about a town and its high school.
Secondary violations. Screwed up Twitter accounts. Now staff turnover on a staff that is only months old.
Tennessee fans will no doubt say that all of the negative stuff was calculated in order to get UT back in the news… which in turn lured in a Top 10 recruiting class and the #1 player in the country.
All the other SEC fanbases would say the same thing if Kiffin had pulled the same stunts at their schools.
But he isn’t at their schools. Which is why, from a league and a national perspective, Kiffin is a joke.
Fair, not fair, that’s just the way it stands on this 22nd of May, 2009.
If the young coach keeps recruiting great classes and wins some games this fall and then improves UT as he goes, not a soul will be laughing.
For now, everyone is.
Take this writer from CBSSports.com who says that “betting against Kiffin” is a “sure thing one way or another.”
Heck, here’s another writer — for the LA Times, for gosh sakes — that fills his “10 games to watch” column with a couple of Kiffin jabs.
Kiffin got himself into much of this with some of the arrogant comments he’s made. If you’re arrogant, people are going to want to take you down and take you down quick.
The young coach asked for it. So now everything he does that’s off the wall will be reported and will be made fun of by writers and talkshow hosts across the country.
Hamilton doesn’t believe that’s fair.
He says that he has found his coach “to be different from the media persona that was painted of him, stemming from those original February comments. He’s not as cavalier as the media painted him to be.”
Okay. Maybe this is all the big bad media’s fault. Just because a guy slams a defending national champion coach for cheating (when he actually didn’t), then teased other schools about taking their best coaches, and supposedly told a recruit he’d pump gas for the rest of his life, then slammed a town and its residents… naaahh. Nothing cavalier in that.
So he’s misunderstood. Let’s just say that’s true.
That doesn’t change the fact that perception is reality to the world outside of Knoxville.
Therefore, while UT’s AD is saying that Kiffin has put Tennessee back on the map… the rest of the country is saying, “yeah, but as a punchline.”
Now it’s up to Kiffin to quiet the laughter. Or else he and Hamilton could wind up in big trouble down the road.
