Kiffin watch: rapidly approaching dumbass territory

I’ve never made back-to-back posts concerning Junior before, but all good things must come to an end, I suppose.  Anyway, after reading this Knoxville News online story (h/t The Wizard of Odds), I can only conclude that anyone still using the “Lane Kiffin, crazy like a fox” line means to insult the intelligence of foxes.

If you’re a Vol fan, you have to hope that nobody is this stupid on purpose:

Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin may have committed a sixth NCAA secondary recruiting violation since his hiring, this one resulting from a segment featuring him on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines.”

During the segment first televised Sunday morning, Kiffin is shown meeting and talking with a recruit. At the end of the segment about Kiffin, ESPN’s Bob Ley, host of the show, brought the possible violation to light.

“Wendi Nix reporting,” Ley said. “Now, Kiffin’s arrival has brought several secondary NCAA violations. It is entirely possible that you just saw another one. Remember the scene where Lane Kiffin is speaking with a recruit?

“Well, in the infamously thick NCAA rulebook, Rule 13.0.1, (it states) media members cannot observe recruiting contact by coaches. Tennessee tells Outside the Lines it is reviewing this matter. The NCAA is reserving comment until the story airs, so we look forward to hearing from them today (Sunday).”

UT spokesperson Tiffany Carpenter confirmed Sunday that UT is reviewing the ESPN story.

That’s right, he allowed a recruiting violation to be filmed for national TV.   I think even the most rabid orange-clad fan would agree it takes a special kind of genius for that.  And I would think that a seventeen-year old recruit meeting with Junior in the future might want to check the room for wires first.

The best part of the article is that there’s more.  There’s mud wrestling with Al Davis –

The Raiders then issued a statement for the “Outside the Lines” segment on Kiffin.

“Lane Kiffin is a flat-out liar,” the statement read. “He lied to the team, he lied to the fans, and he lied to the media. He will try to destroy that university like he tried to destroy the Raiders, and will eventually clash with (women’s basketball coach Pat) Summitt and (men’s basketball coach Bruce) Pearl. Other than that, the Raiders can say nothing further.”

And there’s the Laner, talking about gas stations again, in a clear violation of the First Rule of Holes.

During the segment, Kiffin again denied telling a recruit that he would end up pumping gas like other South Carolina graduates if the recruit went to play for the Gamecocks.

“No, there’s no way that I said that,” Kiffin said. “I wouldn’t say anything like that. First of all, if you look at, I don’t think that anybody pumps gas because everything is self-serve nowadays. There’s no full-serve stations, so I’m smart enough to not have said it because of that, number one. But number two, we don’t negative recruit.”

There, he said it – he’s smart.  He was smart when he said this in the Gainesville Sun, too.

“For those of you who haven’t been to Pahokee, there ain’t much going on. You take that hour drive up from South Florida, there ain’t a gas station that works. Nobody’s got enough money to even have shoes or a shirt on.”

Everybody comments on how attractive Junior’s wife is.  I keep waiting for somebody to drop in one of my favorite expressions about it – that he out kicked his coverage.  A couple more incidents like this ought to do the trick, I figure.

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UPDATE: Over at Team Speed Kills, cocknfire adds some thoughts on the matter.

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UPDATE #2: To answer the question posed in the header of this post, yes, he can.