Tale of the Tape: Urb vs. Lane
September 22nd 2009 23:31
The recent bad blood between the New England Patriots and New York Jets is headline news in the NFL. The lead into their Week 2 matchup was full of smack, predictions, arrogance, and fantastic drama. A Week 2 game, that for all intents and purposes was meaningless, drew the media attention of a playoff game. What is so compelling about this situation is the future ramifications it has: the rivalry immediately intensifies, personnel instantly hates the other team's personnel, and the two teams will now get their rival's best effort every time they meet. Everything about this relationship is captivating to me.
As good as Pats-Jets is, University of Florida coach Urban Meyer and Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin have taken "rivalry" and "bad blood" to a new level. This blossoming hate fest has everything of the Pats-Jets feud, but to the nth degree of intensity and passion. You can track the proceedings with these links in chronological order of cheating accusations and unnecessary but necessary postgame smack.
That second link is the official comeback blast of Urban Meyer. The rivalry is officially back on between the former SEC powerhouse Vols and the perennial conference champion Gators. Since Kiffin's classless accusation of recruiting indiscretions in the spring, Meyer has been unresponsive, presumably waiting for the calendar to turn to Vols-Gators gameday. Urb's squad systematically dismantled Kiffin's Vols en route to a 23-13 victory. Although everyone's prediction that the Gators would run up the score in response to Kiffin's antics did not come to fruition, Meyer made certain he'd get the final punch in this year's battle, whether on the field or off.
Meyer essentially claimed to have watered down his game plan because it didn't appear to him that Kiffin was trying to win, given the execution of his game plan. Meyer tacked on that a handful of his key players were battling the flu and deemed it unnecessary to run it up on Tennessee.
Kiffin's response is why I and everyone else outside of Knoxville utterly despise him. Apparently he didn't learn the childhood lesson of "put up or shut up." He's not aware that you can't keep talking after you are defeated, unless you want everyone to hate you and consider your words to be punchless. Lane keeps digging himself a deeper hole with comments like "I don't know. I guess we'll wait and after we're not excited about a performance, we'll tell you everybody was sick." Urb's Gators, partially ill or not, beat the Vols fair and square. Kiffin's audacity to keep running his mouth reflects an arrogance that we've rarely seen in recent years.
Sometimes a resume of success can lend credibility to an individual, essentially granting a pass to talk trash. But Lane doesn't get off the hook here because he's HAD no success thus far as a head guy. He was fired after one season as head coach of the Oakland Raiders, going 4-12 and completely alienating himself from everyone he needed to please, namely owner Al Davis. He had a handful of good years as offensive coordinator at USC under the tutelage of Pete Carroll, but the prosperity of the Trojans preceded Kiffin and lives on after his departure.
Its too early to evaluate Kiffin's work at Tennessee, but if the effort against Florida is any indication, one could see Kiffin getting the most out of his players and putting together some impressive seasons to come. As for now, Lane should think about reigning in his tongue, because the last thing a coach wants to do in the hyper-competitive SEC is give conference foes bulletin board material when Tennessee rolls around on the schedule.
Watch your mouth, Lane, before you alienate yourself from everyone, lose another coaching job, and suddenly find yourself unemployed.
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