Kiffin off to brash start in SEC — by design

DESTIN, Fla. — Lane Kiffin, meet all THE fellow SEC football coaches you’ve called out and insulted.

Boys, meet Lane Kiffin, the new Tennessee coach.

Kiffin’s first face-to-face meeting this week with the rest of the league’s coaches at the business meetings that ended Friday was interesting, to say the least.

During the two days the coaches met, the 34-year-old Kiffin maintained — maybe naively — that he didn’t think “there would any hard feelings” from some of the coaches and their schools that he ripped during recruiting.

“I would expect everybody to be professional and realize each of us have a job to do, and each job is different,” Kiffin said. “Do I love everything I had to do to get us to this point? No, I don’t. But we had to make an immediate impact.”

There hasn’t been an SEC coach in recent history that has entered the league with guns blazing and mouth running like Kiffin. So far, he has:

Called Florida coach Urban Meyer “a cheater” on signing day (and almost immediately apologized after a reprimand from the SEC).

Told South Carolina recruit Alshon Jeffery (who had witnesses) that he “would be pumping gas for a living” if he signed with the Gamecocks.

Said that Tennessee assistant Lance Thompson, a former Alabama assistant, was responsible for the Crimson Tide’s great signing class. Said Kiffin, “Nick Saban should have started his press conference by saying, ‘Our great class that we signed ... I’d really like to thank Lance because Lance signed eight of those guys.”

Signed a high school player who participated in a kidnapping and aggravated rape six years ago as a 13-year old.

Insulted a small Florida town where he recruited a player, then apologized to town officials and the local high school principal.

Committed two secondary recruiting violations, yet signed three of the nation’s top 150 recruits after signing day, including Bryce Brown, the nation’s No. 1 high school running back.

Told Sports Illustrated he had fired support staff people, that “they had to go because they weren’t going to make it, and they knew it.” Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton denied Kiffin had fired anybody.

Kiffin doesn’t care about the negative publicity he has received. To him, any news is good news, as long as it puts Tennessee in the national spotlight.

“There aren’t any six-year plans any more,” Kiffin said. “You can’t write, ‘They will be good six years from now.’ We had to make an immediate impact and get players immediately.

“So to sit back and say, ‘Well, maybe we’ll take it easy and sit back in the weeds, sign a few players here and there, and maybe next year or the year after that we’ll get a top 10 class,’ we didn’t have time for that.”

His fellow coaches, such as Houston Nutt of Ole Miss and Bobby Petrino of Arkansas, are trying to understand Kiffin’s gamesmanship, especially his opening salvo on Meyer at a signing day breakfast in Knoxville.

“My first thought was he was thinking, ‘I’m strictly with Tennessee people and I’m going to fire them up,’ ” Nutt said. “But anything you say is going national, via blog, via Internet.”

While Nutt understood Kiffin’s approach, he also said that coaches have long memories.

“You can’t help it,” Nutt said. “And your players know more than you do, more word for word, of what was said.”

Like Florida safety Ahmad Black, who told ESPN.com a couple of months ago, “Not being cocky or anything, but we’ve beaten them (Tennessee) four years in a row ... by a lot, too. Taking shots at our coach is like taking shots at us. We’re family. It’s personal now.”

Petrino said he has known Kiffin since the time they were briefly together on the staff of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars.

“I might know a lot about his closets, so he better not insult me,” Petrino said jokingly. “We ate lunch together almost every day, so I got to know him well.

“But that part of him” — Kiffin’s bravado — “I didn’t know. That surprised me a bit. Some things he’s said I’ve laughed about it.

“The thing you find out in this conference is how competitive it is, how passionate all the fans are, the pressure to win. It’s all about recruiting, so if what he has been doing helps recruiting, maybe it’s worth it. But we need to do things with class and dignity. The SEC always has.”

Then there was the testy exchange between South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier and Kiffin in front of waiting media late Tuesday afternoon.

Kiffin had said at a press conference earlier Tuesday that he never had received an apology from Spurrier after Spurrier publicly questioned whether Kiffin had passed the NCAA recruiting test before he began calling prospects when he was hired.

When media later informed Spurrier about Kiffin’s remark, he saw Kiffin, who was waiting to get on an elevator.

“I didn’t accuse you of cheating,” Spurrier said, while pointing at Kiffin. “I said, ‘Is it permissible to call recruits before he’s announced as head coach, before you take the test?’”

Spurrier turned to the reporters and added, “He took the test online and I didn’t know you could do that. I thought you had to take the test on campus, then get announced.”

Kiffin, clearly embarrassed, mumbled something inaudibly. When the elevator finally showed up, Kiffin, Petrino, Kentucky’s Rich Brooks and Auburn’s Gene Chizik got in along with Spurrier.

Spurrier said again as the elevator doors closed, “I didn’t say he broke the rules. I just said, ‘Is it permissible to make calls?’ ”

Meyer and Saban wouldn’t say much about Kiffin.

“Everybody has to have their own way of handling things and heavens knows I’ve made my share of mistakes with the media,” Saban said. “But we try to represent our organization in a first-class way and do it with loyalty and integrity.”

Though it’s obvious Kiffin has few friends among SEC coaches — he didn’t stay and eat lunch in the meeting room with his fellow coaches and didn’t converse with them in the halls during meeting breaks — he doesn’t seem to care.

While his approach to Tennessee’s job has not been tried by any new UT coach in any sport — even bubbly men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl — Hamilton doesn’t mind.

“Lane has energized our fan base,” Hamilton said. “He’s not the guy he’s portrayed to be in the press.”

Kiffin doesn’t care how he’s portrayed, just as long as he has attention focused on a program expected to struggle in his first year.

So far, judging from his recruiting class, his response from junior prospects and from his own players, they like the fact he shoots from the hip and sprays verbal buckshot across the SEC.

“Kids these days respond a lot to confidence,” Kiffin said. “They see how our staff doesn’t back down, and they like that confidence and energy.”