[NU Sports] 1st Report from Knoxville

[Chris Patterson]

Hi Everyone,

            First off, great to see and meet many of the listers in Tampa!
Great fun. I will forward pictures to each of you there individually now
that I'm back home. 

 

I'll go on record that this family wished Tennessee had never hired Kiffin.
. since I have one degree from Tennessee there are a few times I cheer for
the orange, but Kiffin made it hard. I think Tennessee fans deserved a
better face to the football team.

 

            Sports radio talk is mixed here in town. Overall here in town
sports radio quite good and basically pretty classy. Right now, at least
this hour, the sports hosts are promoting letting any recruit leave for any
other school other than USC (and some adding not to allow the commits to go
to another SEC school, too). Some of the players recruited this year
started classes today (so I assume they had already signed their commit
papers).

 

Some callers are saying Kiffin was spineless, but for most part it was very
well know that USC was Kiffin's dream school and he had let the AD know
from day one that this was the case, (and also told the Tennessee AD right
after Carroll left that he would be interested in the USC job), so callers
for the most part are cutting Kiffin quite a lot of slack on leaving after
just one year. 

 

Most of talk is who the next coach might be (sports talk fans are pulling
for Kippy Brown, already on the coaching staff or David Cutcliffe, who was
offensive coordinator when UT won the national championship years ago.
There is also a lot of talk on how to be fair to the new players that
started classes today and whether to release them. Evidently, Kippy Brown
made a very favorable impression at a press conference today. He is now the
interim head coach. Kippy's bio:
http://www.utsports.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/brown_kippy00.html

 

I did not know that Kippy is black. Since the SEC has never had a black
head coach (correct me if I'm wrong), I would have thought that would have
been brought up on sports radio, but it wasn't during the hour I listened.

 

            No word yet on decommits and whether any might head to the Big
Ten.

 

            That's all for now.  

 

            Go CATS!!   Go CATS!!  

 

            Tampa was great!

 

Chris 

Knoxville, TN