Lane Kiffin, Tennessee – (And I don’t use this salutation lightly. I can’t stand calling anyone Dude, or Buddy, or Pal, or what I’m about to use, and I bring it out only for emphasis. Kids, please don’t try this at home.) Bro, if you’re going to be this much of a raging, bull’s-eye-on-the-chest asshat, you had better bring it out of the gate…
— Pete Fiutak, College Football News, 6/23/09
SN: Do you put on the television every night and wonder if Coach Kiffin is going to pop up, saying something new or doing something that makes news?
JC: We’re just focusing on us. That’s the main goal, to make things better for us and go into fall camp getting ready for the season. I don’t really pay attention to what’s going on.SN: What do you make of how he’s been portrayed to the rest of the country?
JC: People go out there and they do whatever they do. Everybody’s going to make money for their jobs. We’re a family here, and we’re not making a big deal out of any of that.SN: Do you think Coach has embarrassed the program or Tennessee with some of the things he’s done?
JC: No comment. Like I said, we just focus on what’s going on here.
— Q & A with Jonathan Crompton, Sporting News, 6/22/09
I don’t know how good a quarterback he’ll be this year, but Crompton knows how to keep his head down.
Get The Picture 
That “no comment” response infuriates me. Crompton is really as dumb as I think he is.
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Global War on Lane (GWOL) Crisis of the Day (COD) (extended version – ‘Crompton Clampdown Post-Interview Aftermath’), 23 June 2009:
Bright and sunny day outside on empty practice field but Valkyrie dark inside the bunker Green Zone, Knoxville:
Zero Ten Hundred or so, Oval Office portion of Bunker, Department of Fatherland Security meeting:
Lane relaxed and refreshed from his extended three day weekend from riding some type of roller coaster in Dollywood to recover from the The Great Lane Kiffin Debate takes over command and control of the meeting from Coach O who tried an some type of an unsuccessful voodoo coup last Friday when Lane took a day off. No one takes muster but Monte still MIA says Lane.
Layla Two hands Lane the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDR) and his venti Chai Tea Latte, cool hand luke warm from Starbucks. Layla Two is glad to get back in the routine of going to Starbacks rather than by the back of the UT Vet School to pick up the bucket of warm animal blood like she had to get for Coach O’s meeting last Friday. Coach O is a very nice guy once you get used to him but he sometimes seems to go a little overboard especially with this voodoo routine, Layla Two thought.
Lane asks Layla Two to read the PDB aloud to him and the rest of the assistant coach troopers in the meeting. Lane, observant as ever, has noticed that the assistant coach troopers seem to pay more attention to Layla Two, who is easy on the eyes, than they do to him.
Lane thinks he is also easy on the eyes but feels the assistant coach troopers may hold a little grudge from Lane not taking his top off and bouncing his man teats around like the rest of the assistant coach troopers did at the recruiting weekend a month or so ago. Lane thinks that was way back when he had only two or three secondary violations against him and, my, how quickly time flies. Soon it will be T-100 or so days until the first game.
Layla Two’s reads with theatrical effect, which Lane thinks is nice, the PDB, a verbatim of Jonny Cromp’s interview with the Sporting News. Lane announces, “First, all correspondents are enemy, we will use and subvert them for our purposes from time to time, but always remember, they are still the enemy.”
Lane asks Layla Two, “What’s up with Jonny’s ‘No comment’ line in response to the outrageous leading question of whether I have embarrassed the Program or Tennessee, or both, with carrying out my plan?”
Layla Two suggests, “Well, maybe somebody paid a retainer and hooked Jonny up with Huntley Hog Johnson down Gainesville way where the only correct responses are always, ‘No comment’ or if under oath ‘I’ll take the Fifth, Alex.’
Lane instructs Lance to find out whether Huntley is licensed to practice inside the Green Zone and also find out just where is this Jonny guy from.
As Lance is climbing up the ladder to exit the escape hatch from the bunker to carry out Lane’s orders, Lane says, “Wait a minute Lance. Before I stole you from Sabin, didn’t he have some type of total incommunicado standing order or something like that in place?”
Lance stops climbing, turns to Lane and says, “Ai,ight Head Coach Sabin did have a complete communications clampdown in effect. If any enemy correspodents like the Tennessee Double Agent Paul Finebaum asked us any questions, the response we were ordered to give was, ‘Ai,ight, you’ve got to check with Head Coach and National Championship Winner Nick Sabin on that one.” Lane goes h’mmm.
Lane turns to assistant coach trooper Eddie Gran, who earned his ribbons from the recent Pahokee campaign, and asked Eddie, “Didn’t I steal that Searles OL guy from Richt, I heard he was a media bad-ass too.” Eddie responds, “No. You tried to steal Rodney Garner from Richt. It was Chizik who tried to steal Searles from Richt.”
Lane says, “Okay, okay, sometimes in the heat of battle I can’t remember who I stole, who I hired, and who I fired. HR was never really my thing anyway. Now, PR on the other hand…”. None of the assistant coach troopers smirk along with Lane.
Layla Two checks her Twitter and pulls Lane aside.
She says, “Coach (that was the first time she’s ever addressed him by any name), Rich Brooks of Kentucky just tweeted me and asked that I warn you of the possible danger of getting fragged, maybe not now, but in the future. Head Coach Brooks says that an early warning sign is when your players start answering ‘No comment’ when asked if their Head Coach and Commander-in-Chief is an embarrassment to the Program, the University or himself.”
Lane didn’t get a chance to meet with Rich at the Destin meetings because Lane was shunning everybody for effect but he does remember Monte telling him that Monte and Rich Brooks knew each other from the NFL and that Rich, a well-known bad-ass unto himself, had been hardened by hand-to-hand freeze-your-ass off bayonet combat experience in the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War.
Lane tells Layla Two to issue a standing order that all players have to stand in front of Lane in plain view at all times. Layla Two suggests that Lane also include the assistant troopers in that standing order too but Lane declines knowing that who can he trust if he can’t trust his assistant coach troopers now that Monte is MIA. Everyone pretty much has the vibe that Monte is actually AWOL but Lane thinks MIA sounds better.
Lane also instructs Layla Two to book him the Presidential Penthouse Suite at Opryland in Nashville next weekend. Lane had such a good time riding the roller coaster at Dollywood last weekend. He thinks the folks outside the Green Zone are much more fun to be around than those inside it.
Lane then dismisses the assistant coach troopers telling them to smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em, police your cigarette butts and then take the rest of the day off.
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Shouldn’t Compton be defending his coach, at least a bit? “No comment” in a context such as this usually means, “I agree with the premise of the question, but I can’t say I do.”
And thus another problem of the Kiffin master plan is revealed-UT players are going to have to spend their time defending (or not) and downplaying the behavior of their HC rather than talking about what’s happening on the field.
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