Buying into the new era in Knoxville

Lane Kiffin gets his man after all.

Ed Orgeron is headed to Tennessee.

The former Ole Miss head coach, who spent the 2008 season as the New Orleans Saints defensive line coach, confirmed via text message this afternoon that he has accepted an offer to be the Volunteers recruiting coordinator, defensive line coach and will have the title of associate head coach.

“I’m so excited,” Orgeron said via phone. “I get to coach with Monte [Kiffin] and I’m getting to recruit again. It’s pedal to the metal and I can’t wait to get up there.”

Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year is all it took.  That’s close to $2 million per year for two assistant coaches in Knoxville.  Wow.  It had better be worth it.

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Coaches’ comedy corner

One thing I like about the college game over the NFL is that there’s a little more room for college coaches to be colorful than their professional cohorts enjoy.

Take Iowa defensive coordinator Norm Parker, who will be mixing it up with Steve Spurrier at the Outback Bowl.  You’ve gotta like a guy who describes his position this way:  “The only thing I do as defensive coordinator is decide when the meetings start and decide when we take a leak.”

Speaking of the OBC, South Carolina receiver Moe Brown may have come up with his epitaph.

“He’s one of the funniest guys you’ll ever talk to,” receiver Moe Brown said, “as long as he’s not talking about you.”

And then there’s the king.

As ESPN.com’s Bruce Feldman puts it: “(Mike) Leach could make Steve Spurrier sound like Jim Tressel.”

The two Cotton Bowl stories Leach told at the coaches presser for the bowl game are hilarious.

… Leach talked about the time when he was an assistant coach at Oklahoma and the Sooners were playing Texas, as always, at Cotton Bowl stadium.

“So we’re coming down the tunnel surrounded by Oklahoma fans and I look over and see Barry Switzer standing with President Gerald Ford and Darrell Royal, and I hear an Oklahoma fan holler, ‘Hey, who are those two guys standing over there with Swtizer?’ ”

Unique background

That’s not all.

Leach said he left a dummy play script lying on the field before the game in hopes that a Texas player and coach would stumble across it and think they had Oklahoma’s offensive game plan.

Leach said he didn’t know for sure whether Texas took the bait, but he does know that on the game’s second play, Oklahoma caught the Texas defense by surprise and hit a long pass to a freshman receiver (Antone Savage) who was all alone.

“Antone gets so excited about scoring a touchdown that he spikes the ball on the 2-yard line,” Leach said. “The official is so excited, he doesn’t even notice that Antone hasn’t crossed the goal line and he signals touchdown. To this day that touchdown has never even been close to getting scored.”

Yar, baby.

Ladies and gentlemen, he’s back!

Get your translators ready, it looks like Ed Orgeron is coming back to an SEC press conference near you.

New Orleans Saints defensive line coach Ed Orgeron is expected to join LSU’s staff as its highest paid assistant coach with the title of associate head coach along with recruiting coordinator and defensive line coach.

Reportedly set to earn something in the neighborhood of $600K – hell, how much was he paid as Ole Miss’ head coach? – Orgeron looks like he’ll be icing on the cake from a recruiting standpoint, as LSU is headed towards another top five class in ’09 anyway.

I presume part of the reason that the deal is so rich is because Lane Kiffin was offering to throw that kind of money at Orgeron to get him to come to Tennessee.  So you can probably add Les Miles to Kiffin’s growing list of people to get even with.

The best laid plans of mice and head coaches

You knew going into the bowl game that you didn’t want to give Jeremy Maclin a chance to return a punt.  You knew it, your players knew it, Ron Franklin calling the game knew it.  You had your punter do all kinds of funky stuff to keep Maclin from returning a kick.  You scratched and clawed all of the first half and were clinging to a seven point lead.  Halftime was just seventy five seconds away.  You were there.

And then you punted.  And your punter tried another one of those strange punts, but got under it just a little bit.

And Maclin had his chance.

He was gone eight yards into the return.

Your team lost.  In overtime.

Reshad Jones, take notes.

If you’re gonna tackle with a shoulder bump, then tackle with a shoulder bump.  From last night’s Holiday Bowl, here’s how it looks when it’s done right (h/t Doc Saturday).

Hopefully, we can see a repeat of that in next year’s season opener.