There s no truth to the rumor that Mike Slive sent Nick Saban a letter of reprimand for hiring Lane Kiffin.
What was the one thing Alabama fans and Tennessee fans agreed on before Friday? They both despised Kiffin.
If Kiffin keeps falling upwards, he just might be the next president of the United States.
See? The jokes about Alabama s new offensive coordinator are easy, but they miss a legitimate concern.
Kiffin s not going to run off at the mouth and embarrass the program, as he did as the Tennessee head coach, because he ll wear the same muzzle as all Saban assistants. If he s going to embarrass the Alabama program, as he did the Tennessee program, it s more likely to happen on the recruiting trail.
No doubt Nick Saban and Alabama did their due diligence with the NCAA before hiring Kiffin, as all schools do as a matter of course, but given his compliance record with the Vols, the enforcement staff might have a reason to keep an eye on him just in case. That is, if the NCAA is still in the business of compliance and enforcement.
Witness Kiffin s appearance in the NCAA s Aug. 24, 2011, Public Infractions Report in the case against Tennessee football and basketball. The following section of the introduction stands out:
In the sport of football, it was alleged that major violations occurred in the conduct of the program, including recruiting activities undertaken by student interns. The (Infractions) committee concluded that the evidence was insufficient to support findings of major violations. However, the committee was troubled by the number and nature of the secondary infractions by the football coaching staff during its one-year tenure at the institution.
From January 2009 through October 2009, the staff committed 12 violations, all connected to recruiting. Some of the violations received nationwide publicity and brought the football program into public controversy. This is not a record of which to be proud.
Nevertheless, because the violations individually were secondary and most were isolated, the committee, in the end, determined not to make a finding of a major violation.
Who was the Tennessee head coach in 2009 when those 12 secondary recruiting violations occurred? Lane Kiffin.
Kiffin was named in this secondary violation:
On October 12, 2009, the former head football coach permitted a recruiting football intern to make in-person, off-campus contacts with high school administrators during a recruiting trip to the high school from which the intern had graduated. This trip and these contacts occurred after the institution s director of football operations informed both the former head football coach and the intern on or about October 10, 2009, that the intern was not permitted to enter a high school s property while accompanying a football coach on a recruiting trip.
Kiffin wasn t named in another violation in which one of his assistants gave to two student hostesses to take an infamous road trip to South Carolina to make their presence known at a high school football game of three recruits. But in Armen Keteyian s book The System, one of those hostesses, Lacey Earps, said Kiffin encouraged her and Dahra Johnson to make that trip.
Earps also said in the book that Kiffin gave her to take out another recruit, highly rated running back Bryce Brown, during an unofficial visit to Knoxville. That would be a secondary violation, too, but it wasn t included in the NCAA report.
The NCAA enforcement staff originally had alleged that Kiffin failed to promote an atmosphere for compliance within the football program and failed to monitor the activities regarding compliance of several assistant football coaches and an athletics administrator involved with the football program who reported directly or indirectly to Kiffin.
But the Infractions Committee didn t find him guilty of those would-be major violations and didn t penalize him personally. His only sanction was a letter of admonishment from Tennessee.
Maybe he learned from his UT experience. After firing him in September, USC AD Pat Haden said Kiffin never had compliance issues as head coach of the Trojans.
It ll be especially important for him to follow the rules at Alabama. Given his past and Alabama s prominence, he s likely to be under scrutiny as a recruiter there like never before.
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