Interesting Article About the Night Kiffin Left

#26
#26
"Yeah, ‘I’m sad right now. Let me get your number.’ It was a little different being a freshman for sure.”
-Marlon Walls

Best line of the entire episode. Shows the perspective between what administration/reporters are thinking or worried about on one hand compared to a 17-18 year old player. Hilarious!
 
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#27
#27
Delmar said:
I know everybody gets weary of discussing Kiffin but this is a really interesting (and long) article about the night he resigned. Quotes from a lot of players and media who were there. The thing I was really glad to hear was the upperclassmen who just wore him out at the team meeting where he announced he was leaving. Wouldn’t even let him speak. It also goes into great detail what Orgeron was doing while all this was happening. Jawaun James is particularly interesting.

www.rockytopinsider.com

‘All Hell Broke Loose’: An Oral History Of The Night Lane Kiffin Left Tennessee For USC | Rocky Top Insider

15 years after Lane Kiffin left Tennessee for USC, RTI talked to 13 people apart of the night to tell an oral history of that night.
www.rockytopinsider.com www.rockytopinsider.com
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With hindsight being 20-20. Hamilton probably regretted hiring Kiffin.
 
#29
#29
JMSqb11 said:
Hamilton probably regretted firing Fulmer less than a year after giving an extension and creating a vacancy that resulted in Kiffin.
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Hiring Kiffin, maybe as he couldn’t have predicted the USC opening. Fans were not going to support Fulmer any longer. Stadium was empty and that would have carried over to 2009 once another Florida loss happened.

Fans wanted 180 degrees from Fulmer
 
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#30
#30
JMSqb11 said:
Hamilton probably regretted firing Fulmer less than a year after giving an extension and creating a vacancy that resulted in Kiffin.
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😂 Hamilton was a good person at some things but he absolutely made every wrong move possible. Fulmer endorsed him for AD; the way he handled Fulmer’s firing was terrible. Also the way he handled Gary Patterson was insulting. All of that had Haslam’s finger prints on it. Kiffin flew in to play golf with Haslam shortly before it was announced he was hired. After the disaster that was Kiffin, Haslam allowed Hamilton to make another hire, Derek Dooley.
 
#32
#32
If Fulmer would have been retained we would have had a pretty sick recruiting class that year. No telling how it would have panned out but Tahj Boyd and Brice Petty we both part of that class.
 
#33
#33
JMSqb11 said:
I've only wanted him back 1 time.... And that is after Schiano Sunday AND when it came out we were talking to likes of Dave Doeren AND when it came out Fulmer was down to Mel Tucker or Jeremy Pruitt.... At that point we were already a national laughingstock (which I did NOT care about) so we could have made any hire we wanted... When it was down to Tucker or Pruitt who have never been coach or Kiffin publicly lobbying for the job with Tee Martin and Kevin Steele ready to roll with him, it would have been a wonderful end result compared to where we started.

The Pruitt years obviously led us to Danny White and Heupel, but there is no one with one shed of IQ that thought (or thinks) that Pruitt or Tucker came anywhere close to Kiffin at that point.

Since it would take a contract for whoever we hired, we could have made Kiffin's buyout very hefty to protect us, but it would have likely not mattered. Kiffin has been at Ole Miss about 2-3 seasons longer than most expected.
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Kiffin has been at Ole Miss for a while bc he has never been offered anything better. Hard to do much when you alienate powerful people at Tennessee, Bama, Southern Cal and even NFL. Kiffin was fired four games into an NFL season and called out as a con man by Al Davis. Saban basically fired him in the middle of a title hunt for Bama. Southern Cal left him on a tarmac after firing him. Numerous stories of him running around chasing coeds while Layla was pregnant and right after having the baby here as well.

I hope the guy has grown up and gotten to be a better human being but he’s one of the sorriest human beings to ever coach here. I don’t get how anyone could ever want him back. He’s generally despised at most places he leaves.
 
#34
#34
DaddyChad said:
Kiffin has been at Ole Miss for a while bc he has never been offered anything better. Hard to do much when you alienate powerful people at Tennessee, Bama, Southern Cal and even NFL. Kiffin was fired four games into an NFL season and called out as a con man by Al Davis. Saban basically fired him in the middle of a title hunt for Bama. Southern Cal left him on a tarmac after firing him. Numerous stories of him running around chasing coeds while Layla was pregnant and right after having the baby here as well.

I hope the guy has grown up and gotten to be a better human being but he’s one of the sorriest human beings to ever coach here. I don’t get how anyone could ever want him back. He’s generally despised at most places he leaves.
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He literally had the Auburn job if he wanted it…. His daughter convinced him to stay. That sir is very much an upgrade in job.

Also USC fans turned out to be idiots when they canned him because they indeed did not turn out better for it.

People still having hurt feelings over a guy we would celebrate for doing the same thing for Tennessee are absurd.
 
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#35
#35
Hamilton's errors were not including wording in Kiffin's contract to prevent him from leaving early without penalty as well as not having a file of potential coaches at arms reach. That's Management 101
 
#36
#36
RDU VOL#14 said:
It was 15 years ago, he took his dream job and we’re a better program now than his Ole Miss program. Did it suck for a while ? Yep. It sure as hell did. Was it his fault? A little bit. But I can place more blame on those who were in place to make the right hires and decisions at the time.
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This x 1000.

The Kiffin season was the last one before Heupel that I actually had some hope that good things might be coming. He got offered his dream job, and how many among us would have turned that down? Sucked for us, but my venom was reserved for the administration that gave us two dreadful desperation hires after Kiffin that anyone could see were awful when they happened.
 
#37
#37
The thing that is forever burned into my memory was my wife and I talking about this in the morning. She simply asked, "do you think he will leave?" I responded confidently, "No way. He is going to build something here. 0% chance he leaves" and then all hell broke loose that evening. Although that all went down the way it did, I never held a grudge like so many did because I get it; he was going to take his dream job. Anyone that knew anything about him knows that job was going to trump any other job 100% (even though I was certain he wouldn't leave Tennessee). I was more pissed off about Froggy Orgeron and the shenanigans he was pulling.
 
#38
#38
onevol74 said:
Kiffin was and is a good coach, but not a great coach by any means. He lost me running the same play against UCLA within the 5 yard line.

I would not ever want him near our program again, but I do not blame him as much for the destruction as I do the idiots who failed to check his references. They were totally incompetent.
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I remember this well. The front 4 of UCLA's defense was their strength that year. I truly believe he didn't want the SEC to have a victory over what was then a PAC-10 team. West-coast guy to the end.
 
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#39
#39
Lane Kiffin is sub-human garbage. What he did to this program should never be forgiven nor forgotten. I wish no good fortune for that tool. It’s good to be reminded of how he pulled this crap . . . Going to his “dream job” is one thing. Basically trying to burn down our program on the way out is another. Lane Kiffin has no honor. No integrity. Seeing him get fired on the tarmac at USC was great. F-that guy.

While the depths of the Dooley-Jones-Pruitt era was a product of incompetent our ADs, Kiffin’s classless, unprofessional exit set us on that path and injected some desperation due to the timing AND all the stink he stirred up running his mouth while he was our coach.

Lane Kiffin = filth.
 
#40
#40
Chad F said:
Lane Kiffin is sub-human garbage. What he did to this program should never be forgiven nor forgotten. I wish no good fortune for that tool. It’s good to be reminded of how he pulled this crap . . . Going to his “dream job” is one thing. Basically trying to burn down our program on the way out is another. Lane Kiffin has no honor. No integrity. Seeing him get fired on the tarmac at USC was great. F-that guy.

While the depths of the Dooley-Jones-Pruitt era was a product of incompetent our ADs, Kiffin’s classless, unprofessional exit set us on that path and injected some desperation due to the timing AND all the stink he stirred up running his mouth while he was our coach.

Lane Kiffin = filth.
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Finally someone said it! It is about time that folks realize that Butch and Pruitt suffered at the hands of Kiffin's exit an entire 4-10 years after it happened! The effect of that night set us back an entire decade! Fahr Lane!
 
#41
#41
RDU VOL#14 said:
It was 15 years ago, he took his dream job and we’re a better program now than his Ole Miss program. Did it suck for a while ? Yep. It sure as hell did. Was it his fault? A little bit. But I can place more blame on those who were in place to make the right hires and decisions at the time.
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This is how I feel as well. I was pissed at the time but if I was coaching USC and Tennessee offered me I'd be on the first plane out of LA. I also believe that he regrets the decision too. I'm willing to bet he'd come back to Knoxville in a heartbeat if given the chance.
 
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#43
#43
guesscrazy said:
Still have an old F Lane Kiffen shirt. Maybe he will get ass cancer.
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Didn’t like the Lane hire.
Didn’t like Lane as coach.
Thought the way he left was unprofessional.

Son and I both fought cancer in the last five years. I will not wish that on the man, no matter how little I thought of his time or his exit from Tennessee.
 
#44
#44
Wahoooo said:
We would not have fallen so hard if we had just promoted Kippy Brown as interim HC. He sure would not have done any worse than DD, at least he could have held the program together to have time to determine if Kippy could handle the job or at least have proper time to hire someone else besides a desperation hire backed 1000 % by Saban. He sold Hamilton 100 acres of beachfront property in Arizona for sure, Saban knew DD would set the Tennessee program back a minimum of 5 years or better.
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Agreed. The desperation hire was ridiculous. I remember cringing when I heard that we were hiring the coach from Louisiana Tech. And we were so desperate that we allowed Dooley to work in buyouts and other things that were heavily in his favor. The guy played us like a harp from hell.
 
#45
#45
sami said:
This x 1000.

The Kiffin season was the last one before Heupel that I actually had some hope that good things might be coming. He got offered his dream job, and how many among us would have turned that down? Sucked for us, but my venom was reserved for the administration that gave us two dreadful desperation hires after Kiffin that anyone could see were awful when they happened.
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We should’ve done what Ohio State did w/ Fickell and hired Kippy Brown as an interim for a season.
 
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#46
#46
rocketskates said:
Agreed. The desperation hire was ridiculous. I remember cringing when I heard that we were hiring the coach from Louisiana Tech. And we were so desperate that we allowed Dooley to work in buyouts and other things that were heavily in his favor. The guy played us like a harp from hell.
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Yep. The thing that folks forget about this was why we had to hire Dooley. Kiffin bailed at such a late date that very few options were left. If I recall correctly, we flirted with Kyle Whittingham. Or was that when we hired Butch? Nightmares and old age make for bad memories.
 
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#47
#47
DaddyChad said:
He’s a POS. Has no commitment in any phase of life.
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Totally how I feel. It blew me away that his name would keep coming up every time we needed a new coach even after he stuck his finger in our eye, some folks still would even consider him for a re-hire. It's not like he's some great gift from God to whatever school is lucky enough to land him.
 
#48
#48
A decade and a half ago. Who gives a f*** at this point.

LET. IT. GO.

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#50
#50
I certainly agree that our administration bore some responsibility but I mostly blame Kiffin. One, we hired him in good faith that he would stay longer than a cup of coffee and rebuild this program. I get the “job of your dreams” but sometimes doing the right thing means you don’t get what you want. But Lane didn’t care about doing the right thing. Second, as mentioned in the last post, he bailed at the worst possible moment right before signing day and all the big name coaches available that year were gone. We got stuck with Derek Doofus and his shower etiquette. So yes, I fault Lame in a big way.
 
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