“To walk your ass out of here is about as bad a deal as you could possibly do…”

With so much attention being paid to our orange-clad neighbors on the Plains, we may have been neglecting our urnge friends to the north somewhat.  It’s time to correct that.

It looks like between hiring relatives from the NFL and Steve Spurrier to fill his staff at UT, Lane Kiffin has seized the opportunity to use his new position to settle a few scores.

Lane Kiffin is still upsetting Al Davis, all the way from the University of Tennessee.

Kiffin hired away assistant offensive line coach James Cregg to join his staff in a role that hasn’t been announced by the school.

Cregg told interim head coach Tom Cable about his decision to quit with two games left after Sunday’s game — over the telephone.

If you’re thinking hmm… this Kiffin fellow comes off like a little prick, well, you’re not alone in that.

… Cable isn’t happy with Kiffin, noting the NCAA “dead period” begins in five days and Kiffin didn’t need to begin raiding the staff now.

One of Davis’ problems with Kiffin’s interest in the Arkansas job last year was that Kiffin wanted to take coaches on the staff with him.

Cable said he plans to speak with Kiffin about that the Cregg situation. Cable doesn’t know if this is just the latest in the Kiffin vs. Al Davis saga.

“You know, maybe it is,” Cable said. “For me, I got a lot of respect for him — had a lot of respect for him — and then to do this is ridiculous. It’s wrong. Wrong in this business, wrong in the business of coaching.”

That’s Cable’s first mistake:  for Kiffin and Al Davis, it’s pretty apparent that coaching is far more of a personal thing than a business one.  I can’t wait to see how that kind of attitude translates in Knoxville.

I’m pretty sure the funniest thing about this all is what the Raiders organizational flow chart must look like this year.  Cable, in addition to being the head coach, is also calling the plays and now coaches the offensive line, to boot.

But this is my favorite bit:

… Director of football development (and good Kiffin friend) Mark Jackson is also no longer with the team after speaking with Cable on Monday morning. Neither is Kiffin’s brother-in-law, Steve Reaves, who was fired.

Apparently Reaves was in charge of duties that included making copies.

Evidently no job is too small for a Kiffin family member.

Cable's reaction upon being told to make copies for Al Davis

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Another thought on the second half of the Tech-Georgia debacle.

Chris Brown has a post up at Smart Football about some recent comments former Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne made about the spread offense and about the next big thing in college football, in particular about Paul Johnson’s triple option.  It’s all worth a look, but this passage from Chris caught my eye:

… When Georgia Tech ran all over Miami and Georgia, a lot of it came in the second half. Often, it seemed like the defense had two guys defending, say, the pitch guy, or the quarterback, and none on the guy who wound up running for a forty-yard run. The reason for that was because Johnson knows how to vary his blocking and assignments to take away the guy responsible for those players. So when announcers like to say that you play “assignment” football to stop the option that is only partially true. If you do, Johnson figures out who is “assigned” to his guys and blocks them, and then lets the reads take care of themselves. So this is where execution and soundness of an offense meet uniqueness.

I hope this doesn’t come off sounding like sour grapes, but that’s not exactly what I saw.  Georgia did a good job on Nesbitt most of the day and a fairly good job stopping the fullback dive play.  But, with very few exceptions, Tech killed Georgia with the outside pitch all day.  If Johnson had to change anything about how he ran those specific plays, I didn’t catch it.  And I think some of the success running them had to be attributed to the same bugaboos that plagued Georgia’s run defense throughout the season’s second half.

Sometimes, a good offensive strategy boils down to little more than running a certain type of play over and over again until the other guy proves he can stop it.

Monday breakfast buffet

Take a little from here, a little from there.  You can always go back for seconds if you want.

• Brady Hoke to… San Diego State?  When I first saw the news on this, I thought this was the weirdest coaching move since, you know whom was signed by you know what.  But the more I think about Hoke, it’s not so strange.  He’s taking the reins at a program that’s in a deep hole, but actually has some resources to work with.  And that weather has to be better than where he’s coming from.  Anyway, if he can make SDSU competitive in the next few years, he’ll become the truly hot coaching candidate of the day.  Is he a Sexton client?
• David Hale posts part two of his interview with Damon Evans, who doesn’t sound happy about the rash of arrests Georgia suffered through this season.
• For Monte Kiffin, blood is thicker than pay.  Monte’s been out of the college game for a while.  I wonder how he’ll handle the spread.  Anyway, defense wasn’t UT’s problem last year.
• As of 9:23 last night, no one from Auburn had asked permission to speak with Searels or Garner.  Although, as Weiszer points out, it’s not like Auburn hasn’t interviewed without permission before.
• Pro riches versus the college life:  that’s the tough decision in front of Matt Stafford.  For what it’s worth, campus scuttlebutt is that it’s still a close call for Matt.
• It’s worth noting that in spite of all the rumors of all the schools that Spurrier has agreed to interview at for a new job, he’s in the process of putting together a pretty good recruiting class.
• If I’d had a Heisman vote, I would have voted for the GPOOE™, but I have to admit the drama queen stuff is getting tiresome.  You want to take the voting results as a slight (although that would seem to be a backhanded knock of Bradford, who’s had a great year himself) and a motivator, fine, but do we really need to hear about it?