If you think it’s hard to win football games in the South Eastern Conference you should try being the new kid on the block in the conference’s coaching fraternity. Shortly after being introduced at the Tennessee Volunteers new head coach Kiffin was chastised by South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier for possible recruiting violations.
The NCAA requires coaches to take a recruiting certification test before they’re allowed to contact recruits and Spurrier assumed that Kiffin had violated the rule when he contacted running back recruit Jarvis Giles before he was introduced as the Vols new coach. Spurrier didn’t retake the test until after he had been introduced at S.C. and I guess he thought that was the norm for coaches and piped that perhaps Kiffin had contacted the recruit as, “an interested observer.”
However, it would be Kiffin who got the last word in on Spurrier letting him know that he isn’t as slow as the Ol’ Ball Coach thinks. “As far as recruiting, we’ve hit the ground running. I took the test a few days before I got hired here so that we could do that,” he said Monday at his introductory news conference.
I think he’ll fit in just fine!
|