Wednesday, March 4

"OK, no problem there, dude. Now, you go back to doing something latently homoerotic, all right?"

As hard as this may be to believe, there is a bit of overlap between the circles for "Good Friends" and "Tennessee Fans" on the Great Hey Jenny Slater Venn Diagram of Personal Acquaintances and Other Important People, so I've made an honest effort to try and hold my tongue about all of Lane Kiffin's shenanigans. I mean, what do I care if he gets into a verbal slapfight with anyone other than Mark Richt? Like I'm gonna expend the energy it would take to pull out the fainting couch for something Kiffykins said about Urban Meyer. (Unless Meyer starts to cry again, which would then make it awesome.)

But jeez Louise, Kiffin, does your tree ever run out of low-hanging fruit?

The prospects were led to the film room, where Kiffin thanked the recruits for making the trip and considering the Volunteers. “Then this other coach [assistant] got up there and said that Tennessee takes special teams very seriously, that it’s a big key to winning,” recalled Northview defensive lineman Denzel McCoy, who has 31 early scholarship offers.

“That coach said they get real fired up on special teams and yelled for everybody to ‘Get up, get on your feet, and get fired up about special teams.’ Then this other coach ripped off his shirt Superman style. It was crazy.” . . .

After a few moments, Smith said the doors swung open and the Tennessee assistants ran into the room. “By now, three or four coaches had their shirts ripped off.” Smith said around 10 Tennessee players, including All-America defensive back Eric Berry of Atlanta and quarterback Jonathan Crompton, ran down from behind the recruits to meet the coaches on the floor. “Eric and the rest of the players were chanting ‘U-T, wild boys … U-T, wild boys … U-T wild boys.’” This time, prospects left their seats and joined the celebration. “We were all jumping up and down together, it was cool,” McCoy said.

After things appeared to calm down, Tennessee recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron gave a rousing pep talk, which caused the whole scene to repeat itself, only more intense. “The last time, everybody was hyped up and feeling it,” Loganville tailback Storm Johnson said. “People were jumping all over the place. It was rocking. You should’ve seen it. Even the podium got knocked over.”

All four of the players said they never saw Lane Kiffin lose his shirt. “He was on the side, just watching and smiling,” Vogler said.


Right, because shirt-ripping, chants of "wild boys," and "rousing pep talks" worked out so well the last time Orgeron tried it. I'm starting to wonder if the only thing separating "Ed Orgeron" from "man with a creepy predilection for shirtless teenage boys" is a windowless van. Look, I know Mark Richt has taken a lot of heat (particularly recently) for being too calm and emotionless on the sideline, for supposedly not being enough of a motivator, but even on the team's worst day I'm still thanking my lucky stars that he doesn't do shit like this.

5 comments:

Holly said...

From a '10 recruit (defensive end Jacques Smith):

"I was at Alabama’s junior camp a couple of weeks ago, and honestly, it was boring compared to Tennessee. We toured the campus at Alabama and the stadium and met with Coach Saban. But there’s no comparison in how excited you get after talking with their staff and the staff at Tennessee. We saw the academic side and the business side of what Tennessee offers, but then we got to see how much fun it will be to play there, too. What Tennessee did blew everybody away."

Fuck all y'all haters; this is getting fun again.

Anonymous said...

What exactly is "the business side" of what Tennessee offers?

And you're certainly right about that, Holly, it is getting fun.;)

Holly said...

CASH MONEY, SON.

(I must've been an LSU fan in a former life; I find this utterly delightful.)

Universal Remonster said...

Holly, I can say with no hesitation as a Tennessean... you were absolutely born to be a Vol if you delight in this ;)


And Doug... plane tickets and hotel is already booked for G-Day, so you better plan some badass shenannigans for the tailgate.

Anonymous said...

Mark Richt, the greatest coach in the world. Ever. None better. Ever.