Kiffin watch: forget about snatching from the jaws of victory…

Junior’s pulling deeply from the asshole of victory.

“I don’t know all the Tennessee history and tradition with all the matchups, nor do I ever intend do,” Kiffin said. “There’s a lot of great teams in this conference, but I told (players) that, to me, this is the biggest matchup. To me, because of what we need to do in recruiting, this will be the biggest matchup for this staff and for our team.

“So this was a great win for us.”

Kiffin reportedly told his Vols that it won’t be the last victory in the series.

“Coach Kiffin made a big emphasis on beating these guys,” said UT junior All-America safety Eric Berry, a former Atlanta-area high school star. “He actually made a promise to us that we would never lose to them anymore, ever, until he leaves.

“Whatever happens, he said he wasn’t going to let Georgia beat us.”

Again, bully to Tennessee for getting their first conference win under Kiffin in dominating fashion.  There’s absolutely no question that the better team won.  But it sure would have been a lot more impressive to hear that bravado publicly in the week leading up to the game.

And how convenient that Tennessee’s new BFF “biggest matchup” is with the school having the crappy year.  I guess my friends over at Third Saturday in Blogtober are going to have to rethink the whole concept behind their blog.

How weird is that rationale, anyway?  I thought a program recruited to win games.  The Laner wins games to recruit.  Maybe he’ll give his program a trophy the year Rivals ranks his recruiting class #1.

As a rule, I don’t like living vicariously through another team’s efforts, but I’m making an exception this year.  I hope Nick Saban wipes UT off the map in two weeks.

30 Comments

Filed under Don't Mess With Lane Kiffin

30 responses to “Kiffin watch: forget about snatching from the jaws of victory…

  1. We can make fun of Kiffin all we want, but we’re headed to 1998 full steam ahead. Once UT starts cleaning out Atlanta right out from under us again, we’re going to have to deal with being, at best, 3rd in our own division.

    Why does it seem to me that Florida, LSU, UT, UA, and AU all have a plan and we don’t. We couldn’t be more stale (and screwed) if we tried. It’s going to be a ROUGH 4-5 years.

    Like

  2. NebraskaDawg

    Coaches, like diapers, need to be changed regularly. And for the same reasons.

    Like

  3. NebraskaDawg

    Of all the teams on our schedule the absolute worse loss would have been to the Lamer. I can understand losing to Florida or Georgia Tech but to lose to this buttwipe especially by way of blowout is the worst. Our coaching staff has officially made Lane Kiffin look like a credible SEC head coach. Watchout Cocks, you now have company in the middle of the SEC pack for a while.

    Like

    • Mayor of Dawgtown

      Lane’s not really the one calling the shots. His old man is the de facto head coach. Lane is the face man and mouthpiece. We all recognized Sr.’s handiwork with the D. The rollout passing game idea came from him, too. No doubt about it.

      Like

      • Jeffrey

        Kiffin is the leader of this team, especially the offense. His dad is a defensive genius, and Kiffin is just a genius. You can hate on him all you want, but he has a master plan. Tennessee will be fighting for the SEC Championship in 2 years. Mark it down.

        Like

    • Jeffrey

      Oh and what’re u talking about making Kiffin look like a credible SEC head coach? He does that on his own. You’re just mad because he made your coaching staff look like they didn’t even deserve the right to be coaching against him. And you’re talking about Carolina and Tennessee being in the middle of the pack? Carolina and Tennessee will both be finishing above Georgia from here on out. Georgia is horrible and it’s only gonna go downhill.

      Like

  4. Hogbody Spradlin

    He said all that after the game? How convenient.

    Like

  5. Stick it on the bulletin board for next year, boys.

    Like

  6. baltimore dawg

    kind of hard for me to indulge in the kiffin watch stuff now. might be best to put that in the same storage facility as the black jerseys.

    we are in the wilderness, and honesty compels me to admit that kiffin, who is definitely a young loudmouth, exercised a good deal of gentlemanly sportsmanship by not scoring 60 on us, as he surely could have.

    Like

    • bd, that was my first thought as well (although I noticed that Monte kept the first string defense in even after Georgia took Cox out of the game at 45-19 mid-fourth quarter)… but the guy can’t help making an ass out of himself no matter what the situation is.

      And honestly, do you really believe that 59-19 would feel any worse than what we saw Saturday?

      Like

      • baltimore dawg

        “And honestly, do you really believe that 59-19 would feel any worse than what we saw Saturday?”

        maybe not, but i would be mad as hell at kiffin if they had kept tying to score. as it is, i have to give him some credit for exercising restraint in a situation where, based on my initial impressions of him, i would have guessed that he’d have none.

        Like

        • BullGator

          This wasn’t kiffin being a gentleman, it was a play just like everything else. He doesn’t want to give anyone too much material for revenge. He’s a total idiot, and I’m embarrassed that he coaches at an SEC school.

          Like

    • Dog in Fla

      Global War on Lane (GWOL) Crisis of the Day (COD) Piece, ‘Post-Georgia Beatdown Celebration’, 12 October 2009

      President’s Mansion, Green Zone, Knoxville

      0930 Department of Fatherland Security debriefing:

      Monte pounds down his second cup of expresso as Layla hands him the daily intel report.
      After Monte let Lane count his first SEC coup against Georgia, he sent Lane and his other assistant coach troopers to get verbals from every player in Georgia knowing that if that happens, they won’t even have to venture back into Pahokee which still remains enemy territory for Tennessee despite the so-called Pahokee Peace Treaty.

      Monte reads the intel report and tells the few remaining assistant coach troopers who are not combing the State of Georgia:

      “Men, today there is no Crisis of the Day in the Green Zone. I gave that Crisis to the Marks to take back south with them to Athens. Lane and I are being hailed as great sportsmen for not scoring 60 plus on Georgia and while there is certainly something to that on one hand, on the other why would we want Georgia to make any changes? They are good enough, big enough and strong enough for us right where they are now. I’ve already got next year’s game plan in the bag when they’ll be starting not seniors on the defensive line and at quarterback but players with a lot less experience. When I lived in Tampa, I didn’t just to go Bern’s Steakhouse, I coached a little defense.”

      “The people in Georgia feel bad because they now know that their team was beaten by me, my boy and our Heisman Trophy candidates Catfish and EB, not just the referees. They felt better when it was just the refs beating them like LSU did. They don’t feel so good now.”

      Meanwhile back at the Global War on the Marks in Athens, the Georgia coaching staff in the underground bunker at Butts-Mehre is busily at work drawing up its game plan for Vandy who just lost in OT to powerhouse Army who lost an earlier one-pointer to powerhouse Tulane.

      Instead of drawing straws to see who gets to stay behind in Nashville to recruit after the Vandy game, many especially if Steve Martin’s Vandy wins, want to hang around Nashville to take in a Grand Ole Opry show, do some shopping for wives and girlfriends at Opry Mills, take in a breakfast at Pancake Pantry and be outside the strike zone.

      Mark when asked by an inquiring nosy enemy correspondent whether he is concerned about the state of his program especially with Lane coming in now to recruit all the five and four stars out of the State lays a Rudyard or a Churchill or a somebody’s line on them about like Joe Cox did after OSU loss about them not their ass beat in the arena so therefore they don’t know what it’s like to get their ass beat in the arena so be quiet for a change why don’t you?

      Monte having won the Global War on Lane battle against Georgia cancels all Department of Fatherland Security briefings until further notice which will be sometime before the fourth Saturday in October when he gets a chance to call off the dogs against Nick Saban.

      Spurrier when asked about South Carolina’s game v. Tennessee says so what all they’ve beaten is Georgia. When reminded that South Carolina was beaten by Georgia earlier in the year, Spurrier, never one to blame any loss on anyone but himself, said wait until next year.

      Like

  7. Hobnail_Boot

    I hope Eric Berry gets drafted to St. Louis or Oakland.

    A-hole.

    Like

  8. Turd Ferguson

    Wasn’t it just last year that we brought in the top 2 high school players in Tennessee? Perhaps Lane should get back to work on that “fence” he was planning to build around his home state before venturing into Georgia. Otherwise, the rest of the teams in the conference will continue to have their pick from the top talent in Tennessee … with the scraps going to the ACC.

    And please, it’ll take a hell of a lot more than a loss to Tennessee in Knoxville for us to lose our stranglehold on the state’s top talent (as history has shown). At this point, I’d be much more worried about poachers from the Big-12 and Pac-10 than ol’ Kiffykins. Especially for as long as Ed “F*ck you, Grandma!” Orgeron is on board.

    Our biggest asset in recruiting these days is not our win-loss record. It’s the fact that Mark Richt is the sort of person that people want to play for (not to mention the sort of man that parents would kill for their kids to be coached by). Kiffin can turn Tennessee back into a winning program, but there’s no such thing as a douche-ectomy.

    Like

  9. I can’t fault any of his logic.

    1. It wasn’t assured that we were having a “crappy” year until Lane cemented it Saturday.

    2. You win to recruit and you recruit to win. It’s a virtuous cycle. And good things have befallen Tennessee when they’ve recruited well in Georgia.

    It doesn’t matter what Alabama does to Tennessee. UT’s got their signature win. No matter what happens the rest of the way, they can hang their hat on that and say “45-19” to any 5-start recruit in Atlanta.

    With a different outcome, we’ve could’ve sloughed him off as a mouthy flash in the pan, but that ship has sailed. We (and Martinez, specifically) just legitmized Lane Kiffen, just as we did Okie State (albeit briefly) and West Virginia.

    Like

    • Tommy, he’s saying the game with Georgia is UT’s “biggest matchup”, not because UT needs to win it to win the SEC East, but because it helps in recruiting.

      Maybe I’m missing something here, but those are some weird priorities, if you ask me.

      And by the way, what’s with that “nor do I intend to” bit?

      Like

      • From a UT perspective, the SEC East is Georgia and Florida. If you go .500 between UGA and UF, you’ve got decent odds to get to Atlanta in early December.

        So why emphasize beating Georgia?

        Georgia’s a team they’ve had success against over the past 20 years, and it’s the flagship program of an adjacent, talent-rich state. Atlanta is a three-hour drive from Knoxville.

        Florida is considerably less beatable, considerably farther away and its talent is considerably more contested (UF, UGA, Miami, FSU, USF, UCF, etc.).

        Compared to Florida, Georgia is the low-hanging fruit and the associated recruiting benefits make it arguably the sweeter fruit.

        Like

      • Mayor of Dawgtown

        Senator, not wanting to hijack the thread, but I want to respond to your suggestion that I look up the Vols’ 2008 schedule and report to you what I found. The Vols had 4 games that year where the other team had a bye week before playing Tennessee and the Vols did not:FL, UGA, South Car. and KY. Tennessee lost 3 of the 4. Maybe they should have fired their AD at the same time Fulmer got the ax.

        Like

      • mdr

        According to UT folks on Rivals, the “nor do I intend to” is a misquote. He supposedly said, “nor do I PRETEND to…”

        But what he is saying is clear. If he can take Atlanta from us, he can compete with UF in the east. If we lose Atlanta the way we did in the late 80’s, we are back to fighting with the cocks for 3rd in the division and a trip to Nashville for the holidays.

        Like

    • Dog in Fla

      And while we were doing that, we somehow found the time to add to the legends of Meyer, Saban and CPJ.

      After ‘legitimizing’ Lane, who will run off at the mouth about it until we beat him, which may not happen until Monte decides that $1M/year is not enough to keep him from retiring, there’s got to be something worse.

      I just don’t know what it is.

      Oh wait, I do: we’ll just continue to do the same things with the same people in the same ways as we’ve been doing. That’s it. We’ve just got to get used to it. By the way, we Georgia fans living in Florida have already got a good headstart on the rest of you.

      Like

  10. CarlosHawes

    Oh, so Alabama is going to “wipe Tennessee off of the map in two weeks”? You mean just like UF was going to “hang 80 on UT?” Just better hope you guys don’t get the flu like the gators!!! 🙂

    Like

  11. Hogbody Spradlin

    Maybe I’ve got wishes filling in judgments here, but is it just me, or does Kiffin seem like the kind of guy who’ll get caught with his johnson in the wrong place before long?

    Like

  12. “With a different outcome, we’ve could’ve sloughed him off as a mouthy flash in the pan, but that ship has sailed. We (and Martinez, specifically) just legitmized Lane Kiffen, just as we did Okie State (albeit briefly) and West Virginia.”

    Great post. Absolutely GREAT post.

    Like

  13. Pingback: The Brave New World « Vols in the Fall