It's All Part of the Plan

There aren't a ton of media folks here, but everyone who made the trip was interested in talking to one person first and foremost... Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin met with the media for about a half hour (and then some more after that) and had plenty to say about his first few months on the job. Here are some highlights...

On all the transfers...
"It's not an easy time to be a Tennessee football player. We have very high expectations for what you do on the field. Some guys weren't able to hold to those. So some guys we removed ourselves, some guys decided to leave themselves, and we wish them the best of luck."

On why he has been so outspoken/controversial...
"As you look at this job, you have to have a national presence. When you become a head coach, you take a specific plan into each job. This one as I looked at it needed to have a spark immediately as far as national exposure. The way recruiting is now, we've got to be able to have players around the country, talking about kids even in middle school, seeing Tennessee, talking about Tennessee, being familiar with our staff. As you look at the plan over six months, I think it's going extremely well."

On whether he thinks he has done the right thing by being in the spotlight so much...
"Do I love everything I had to do to get us to this point? No. But my job is not to love everything I do. My job is to do the best thing for our university and for our people."

On the reaction from his players to his comments...
"When you do some of the things we've done, it puts it back on our players because they know you've said some things about what you're going to do and what you can accomplish. When you go back from doing that and you're working out with your players and a couple of them come up and say, ‘Hey Coach, we really appreciate that because that makes us want to work that much harder.' It's a motivational tool for our players."

On how his comments affected recruiting...
"I don't think if you took a real conservative approach, I don't think there's any way you would have signed that class or signed the No. 1 player in the country. So in my opinion, there were things that had to be done specifically for this job."

On whether his comments make his team a target...
"If we didn't have this attention drawn to ourselves, would we not coach as hard? I don't think anything changes at all because we're going about it regardless of what's been said or who we're playing or what's in the media."

On what other coaches think of him...
"Each of us have a different job for a different university, a different athletic director and a different team. I wouldn't think there'd be any hard feelings for anybody. I think at the end of the day, everybody understands we all have specific jobs for our university."

Kiffin also said he had no further plans to apologize to Urban Meyer beyond the one he made immediately after signing day. In response to a question of whether he felt like Meyer would expect an apology, he joked that he was still waiting on an apology from Steve Spurrier for jokes Spurrier made at his expense. And best of all, Kiffin said when he was fired by the Raiders, he spent the next few months coming up with a specific game plan for how he would approach potential jobs, including Tennessee and said that the comments he has made this offseason were all part of that plan, months before he was even offered the job.

Of course, blame Kiffin if you must, but at least he's had some fun with it. On the other hand, there's Coach Meyers, who wasn't making any bones about how much he dislikes his compatriots at other programs.