Lane Kiffin - Rule Follower

[Mr. Sensible]

http://www.latimes.com/sports/college/usc/la-sp-usc-recruiting14-2010jan14,0,1704092.story

USC assistant called Tennessee recruits
Ed Orgeron says he 'followed rules' when speaking to players who'd given commitments to the Volunteers.

By Lance Pugmire and Ben Bolch

January 14, 2010

Lane Kiffin had just finished discussing the "magnifying glass" of operating in the Southeastern Conference, and how it had taught him the importance of "complete attention on the rules."

Then came a question about one of the assistant coaches who had come with him, and whether Ed Orgeron had initiated phone calls to players who had been recruited to Tennessee.

"I don't know that that's accurate. . . . I don't believe that has happened," Kiffin said Wednesday evening, just after he was introduced as USC's new head football coach. "I've told [Tennessee Athletic Director] Mike Hamilton I will not recruit the players that go there unless they call me."

It was more a question of ethics than of NCAA rules. Although this is a mandated "dead period" for college recruiting -- four days when, as notices taped all around USC's Heritage Hall explained, face-to-face visits are prohibited and contact is limited -- prospects are allowed to receive one phone call from each school.

Kiffin, noting that he had been gathering his family and been on a plane a good chunk of the day, promised he'd check into it, though -- a pledge that soon became moot.

Off to the side a few minutes after Kiffin finished speaking, Orgeron, after much prodding, told reporters that he had indeed initiated phone calls to some of the 26 Tennessee recruits he and Kiffin had received commitments from.

"Yes, I did call recruits to clear up any questions they had," Orgeron said without identifying the players and declining to answer how many he reached. "In my knowledge, I followed the rules correctly."

However, there were also reports that Orgeron encouraged recruits who had signed up for spring semester courses at Tennessee not to attend their first classes this week.

NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said rules stipulate that "an institution cannot contact a student-athlete enrolled at another institution without permission from the current school. A currently enrolled student-athlete who transfers must sit out a year before becoming eligible to compete. An enrolled student-athlete is one who is officially registered and enrolled in a minimum, full-time program of studies in any quarter or semester of an academic year, as certified by the registrar or admissions office, provided the student was present at the institution on the opening day of classes."

Osburn also said the NCAA may choose to work with USC and Tennessee to gather "relevant fact and data" regarding Orgeron's contact.

Asked if he advised Tennessee recruits to not attend classes Wednesday so they wouldn't face transfer rules, Orgeron said, "I'm not going to get into that.

"I make tremendously strong ties with families in recruiting," he added. "I always try to guide them in the right direction and provide information to them to help some young men who are wondering, 'Coach, what can I do? What are my options?'

"All I did was present their options. Families call me. I call them. I had answers. I gave them answers to their questions."

A father of one of the players said Wednesday that Orgeron had offered USC scholarships to some of the Volunteers recruits.

Jeff Bray said his son, former Kingsburg (Calif.) High quarterback Tyler Bray, was in a room Tuesday when Orgeron made his pitch to a group of players via speaker phone.

"He didn't think it was very cool," Jeff Bray said of his son's reaction to the presentation. "You're in the middle of all this turmoil and they're trying to pull players. . . . My understanding was a lot of [the players] got very angry and voiced their anger on the phone."

Mike Garrett, USC's athletic director, said he hadn't explored Orgeron's contact with Tennessee recruits and wasn't comfortable responding to questions about how he would handle the matter.

"I don't even want to get into it," Garrett said. "Are you kidding me? It doesn't even make sense."

Garrett said university compliance officials have reviewed violations that occurred at Tennessee under Kiffin's leadership -- including female members of the school's "Orange Pride" unit visiting elite recruits at their high school campuses -- and "we feel comfortable with it."

Tennessee had a highly touted recruiting class, but experts have predicted it will unravel in the wake of Kiffin's departure. National signing day for football is Feb. 3.

"Tennessee's going to lose a lot of players, without a doubt," said Tom Lemming, a recruiting analyst for CBS College Sports Network. "Tennessee has no coach with only two weeks left in recruiting. They're kind of left between a rock and a hard place."

As for USC: "Lane can't do much better than what they were doing," Lemming said. "All he has to do is maintain and add a few big names."

Many of USC's recruits seemed eager to meet their new coach. Lakewood High quarterback Jesse Scroggins and safety Dion Bailey reaffirmed their commitments in the wake of Kiffin's hiring, and Hillside (Ill.) Proviso West receiver Kyle Prater is expected to begin attending classes next week.

San Diego Mission Bay running back Dillon Baxter also seems excited about playing for Kiffin, his coach, Willie Matson, said.

lance.pugmire@latimes.com twitter.com/latimespugmire

ben.bolch@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

[Buzz Killington]

It was more a question of ethics than of NCAA rules. Although this is a mandated "dead period" for college recruiting -- four days when, as notices taped all around USC's Heritage Hall explained, face-to-face visits are prohibited and contact is limited -- prospects are allowed to receive one phone call from each school.

Otherwise known as Saban's visiting days.

[War Eagle!!!]

Here is a really good article on the kind of guy Kiffen is. What a jack ass. What if Auburn would have gotten him and he tried this shit. He wouldn't have had the chance to leave I don't think...

In February of 2009, just a few months after Lane Kiffin's tenure began at the University of Tennessee, Vols senior center Josh McNeil walked into the Neyland-Thompson sports complex on the university campus. He paused alongside the Vols 1998 national championship trophy and shook his head in disbelief.

"They'd replaced our highlight video from the past season with Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and Dwayne Jarrett from USC. I was like, 'Man, I know we were 5-7 last year, but this is Tennessee. Right beside our national title trophy? Come on, man.'"

Walking up the stairs, McNeil, a 6-foot-4 280 pound offensive lineman, says that all the televisions in the complex, at least 20, were tuned to still photos of stellar plays featuring USC athletes. In particular, McNeil paused in front of one photo of Reggie Bush diving into the end zone on a sunlit California field.

"I was thinking, 'Damn, Jamal Lewis went here. Travis Henry went here. It ain't like we never had any running backs of our own.'"

Within a day the pictures and video were down, but the message had been sent. A new era had dawned in Knoxville.

A few months later after witnessing what McNeil said he believed were affronts to the Tennessee tradition that upset him, the player confronted Kiffin. "Coach," he said, "I feel like you're intentionally not embracing UT's traditions."

Kiffin smirked. "Well, whatever Tennessee's been doing isn't working anymore, so we're coming up with something new. Get used to it."

When Kiffin said, "something new," he meant exactly what USC had already done before, McNeil told FanHouse. Multiple team sources confirmed McNeil's claims.

By Junior Day, March 2, 2009, Kiffin had his first crop of potential players, hundreds of then-high school juniors on Tennessee's campus.

The players were divided between offense and defense and placed in front of highlight videos that were designed to show them the Tennessee way of playing football.

As the offensive players sat down on the field, a video flashed on the screen with a word in bold:

DETERMINATION

McNeil watched. "I was thinking, maybe we're going to see Dan Williams block against Kentucky that got us into the SEC championship game (in 2007). That was a pretty huge play."

Instead a USC play featuring Reggie Bush opened the montage.

Another word flashed on the screen.

EXPLOSIVE

More USC highlights followed.

"All the way back to Carson Palmer," says McNeil. "I mean, really, Carson Palmer is explosive?"

At the end of the video, Lane Kiffin addressed the recruits.

"We're going to make this the USC of the South, and the USC of the East Coast," said Kiffin.

McNeil did not hide his disgust. "I was sitting right there and it broke my heart. I came to Tennessee because we were Tennessee, not because we were pretending to be somebody else."

McNeil paused.

"And you know what else? Out of all those clips there wasn't one Oakland Raider highlight. Not one. Now [the Oakland offense] is the same offense, you know? You ever think maybe it has something to do with the players?"


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A drum begins slowly beating in the back of a Tennessee meeting room.

Ba-dum, ba-dum

Coach Ed Orgeron, UT's recruiting coordinator, steps to the front of the room.

"One heartbeat," he growls.

The drum beat gets louder and faster.

"I'm about to teach y'all our special team cheer," Coach Orgeron said to a gathering of Tennessee players.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.

"We're going to be crazy about special teams here."

"Now when these two Bushwackers run through the door, you rip your shirts off and scream as loud as you can. One side of the room yell, 'ST,' and the other side yell, 'wild boys.'"

The doors burst open, and two graduate assistants on the football team, walking like the Bushwackers from the old WWE wrestling days, arms gesticulating awkwardly in front of them, begin madly stomping about the room.

Coach Orgeron screams, "What's the first thing you do before you get in a fight?"

No answer.

"You take your shirt off!" he screams.

Then Coach Orgeron rips off his shirt in front of the team.

The drumbeat is incessant, loud. Players stare at one another.

Coach Orgeron begins to lead the cheer.

"ST!" he screams.

"ST," the team responds.

"Wild boys!" Orgeron screams.

"Wild boys," the team responds.

"Damn, I felt like an idiot with my shirt off," McNeil says. "So did lots of the older guys."

But some of the younger players believed the chant was very cool, McNeil said. It fired them up.

At least it did until they realized that the "new chant" the UT coaching staff introduced to the players was a retread.

"It was a USC thing," McNeil says, "I took an official visit there. They used to say, 'SC', and the other side would say, 'wild boys.' They came to Tennessee and they changed SC to ST for special teams. How lame is that?"

Eventually the shirtless drills fade out.

"We didn't get as hyped up as they wanted us too, everybody would just laugh," says McNeil, "We just all kind of thought it was weird."


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That year for spring practice, Lane Kiffin instituted a new rule, profanity was permissible in the songs they would play as the players stretched.

As UT players got loose and children visiting practice ran along the sidelines, hardcore rap lyrics blared alongside Kid Rock anthems.

The current players had no issue with the cursing, some liked it.

But several former UT players were offended when they brought their young children to the practice and heard the music, according to team sources interviewed by FanHouse.

Kiffin didn't care.

"He told me that's how they did it at USC," McNeil says.


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As the start of a new season neared, Kiffin and crew focused on their continuing makeover of the Vols.

It was time to practice their team chants.

Kiffin said, "When we're on national TV about to come out of the tunnel, we've got to make it look good."

The entire team lined up in the end zone as part of fall camp.

One side would yell, "It's war time," while another side said, "Let's take it outside."

Tennessee players embraced the new tradition. They believed it was theirs and theirs alone.

Until one of the players found it on YouTube. (A similar video can be found here)

Another USC chant.

This time verbatim.


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As the season neared, a new controversy arose: Kiffin did not want to say General Neyland's Game Maxims. The tradition, in which the Volunteer players chant the seven maxims beginning with:
"Coach Kiffin cared about Tennessee traditions less than the worst Vol hater in the state in Alabama. That man's a snake."
- Josh McNeil, Former Vols Lineman
"One: The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win."

And ending with:

"Seven: Carry the fight to our opponent and keep it there for sixty minutes."

The maxims trace back to the legendary General Neyland, the all-time winningest coach in Tennessee history and the man the stadium was named after.

Kiffin didn't like the maxims, didn't want to do them. For decades they'd been the final words uttered by every Tennessee player as he left the locker room and rushed onto the field.

Always the head coach led the chant.

No longer.

Kiffin brought in past players and had them lead the team in the chant instead.

Often he was in the coaches' locker room during the chanting. Later, in a departure that altered 70 years of Tennessee tradition, Kiffin didn't take the maxims with the team on the road.

Not a single coach ever said the maxims either, according to team sources.

For McNeil, this confirmed his worst suspicions. "Coach Kiffin cared about Tennessee traditions less than the worst Vol hater in the state of Alabama," he said. "That man's a snake."


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But everything wasn't bad at Tennessee.

For instance, there was Lane's dad, Monte, the team's defensive coordinator.

"Monte was loved by everyone," says McNeil. "He was a great guy, a great football coach, but a better guy."

McNeil pauses for a moment, thinks.

"He and Lane had absolutely nothing in common."

[Mr. Sensible]

Here is a really good article on the kind of guy Kiffen is. What a jack ass. What if Auburn would have gotten him and he tried this shit. He wouldn't have had the chance to leave I don't think...

Are you saying Auburn fans are more redneck crazy than Tennessee fans? 

[Saniflush]

I didn't understand why the like to talk about maxi pads before going onto the field?

[War Eagle!!!]

Are you saying Auburn fans are more redneck crazy than Tennessee fans? 

Huh? Is that a serious question?

I am telling you if he tried to change up all the traditions at Auburn he would have been run out...

[Mr. Sensible]

Huh? Is that a serious question?

I am telling you if he tried to change up all the traditions at Auburn he would have been run out...

Wait til Chizik unveils the blue helmets.

[Buzz Killington]

I didn't understand why the like to talk about maxi pads before going onto the field?

I thought it was the magazine.  I just figgered Layla must have posed for it or something.

[War Eagle!!!]

Wait til Chizik unveils the blue helmets.

Bullshit.

If you know something spill it.

If you are throwing shit out there just to make a point, shut the fuck up...

[Mr. Sensible]

Bullshit.

If you know something spill it.

If you are throwing shit out there just to make a point, shut the fuck up...

I've seen 'em. Not sure we'll ever use them, but they do exist.

[War Eagle!!!]

I've seen 'em. Not sure we'll ever use them, but they do exist.

You've seen blue helmets?

How?

[Kaos]

I've seen 'em. Not sure we'll ever use them, but they do exist.

I've seen them and the orange ones, too.  

To be fair, they had them at J&M when Tuberville was there.

[Mr. Sensible]

I've seen them and the orange ones, too.  

To be fair, they had them at J&M when Tuberville was there.

Yes. Personally, they both are hideous. However, if things get desperate, I wouldn't put it past this bunch to try something like this.

Navy Nightmare anyone? That's one step away from alternate uniform night.

Plus, look at the competition. No matter what you think of the Nike Pro Combat uniforms teams wore this year, they generated a lot of buzz for Nike. Under Armour is sure to answer that in some way. Why not try it on the SEC school in the fold?

[eagleair89]

AU actually wore blue helmets back in the early 50's a few times.......I will see if I can find a pic.
One pic I remember has Vince Dooley with a blue helmet.


ps: imho, Chizik has worked pretty hard to include A-CLub members and make them feel welcome in the program.  As of right now, there are enough old players still alive with some pull that if the uniforms were changed or any uniform experiment was tried.....it would cause incredible turmoil in the AD and quite possibly cost some folks their jobs.......Kaos, you should start a write in campaign to JJ, telling him how much AU folks want new uniforms. Just inundate him with e-mails, letters, marches on the AD complex......if you get him to listen and act on your suggestion, he is "outta there"   

[War Eagle!!!]

Yes. Personally, they both are hideous. However, if things get desperate, I wouldn't put it past this bunch to try something like this.

Navy Nightmare anyone? That's one step away from alternate uniform night.

Plus, look at the competition. No matter what you think of the Nike Pro Combat uniforms teams wore this year, they generated a lot of buzz for Nike. Under Armour is sure to answer that in some way. Why not try it on the SEC school in the fold?

See, that's why I called bullshit. You see fucking helmets at a book store and then turned it into the "Wait till Chizik breaks traditions and Auburn wears blue helmets."

Whatever dude...

[Mr. Sensible]

See, that's why I called bullshit. You see fucking helmets at a book store and then turned it into the "Wait till Chizik breaks traditions and Auburn wears blue helmets."

Whatever dude...

Saw the orange ones at the bookstore. Saw the blue ones in the football complex. Fuck you.

[Buzz Killington]

Navy Nightmare anyone? That's one step away from alternate uniform night.

Yeah...next thing they're gonna try an All Auburn All Orange campaign or something stupid like that.  These guys must be stopped.

[Mr. Sensible]

Yeah...next thing they're gonna try an All Auburn All Orange campaign or something stupid like that.  These guys must be stopped.

For the record, I hated that shit too. Always wear my navy blue windsuit to games. T-shirt or sweat shirt depending on weather. (For the West Va. game this year, I needed a wetsuit.)

[Token]

Yes. Personally, they both are hideous. However, if things get desperate, I wouldn't put it past this bunch to try something like this.

Navy Nightmare anyone? That's one step away from alternate uniform night.

Plus, look at the competition. No matter what you think of the Nike Pro Combat uniforms teams wore this year, they generated a lot of buzz for Nike. Under Armour is sure to answer that in some way. Why not try it on the SEC school in the fold?

Careful. That slope is slippery.

[Buzz Killington]

For the record, I hated that shit too. Always wear my navy blue windsuit to games. T-shirt or sweat shirt depending on weather. (For the West Va. game this year, I needed a wetsuit.)

My point is that Chizik and his rogue band of fuck ups didn't start that...or the Jungle at Jordan-Hare either for that matter.