[NU Sports] 1st Report from Knoxville

[hakirsch at aol.com]

Nice meeting you in Tampa as well.  
But you allude to the other less discussed issue--the players.  Yes its a risk for them to sign up thinking they have 4-5 years but 1 year ?! What a screw job to them sure they can transfer but it certainly can mess up your college life particularly if you are happy there;have made friends etc.
Steve mariucci did the same at Cal prior to going to the ,Niners though I don't think he had any intention of going until they came knocking. 
Harry------Original Message------From: Chris PattersonSender: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.comTo: nwu-sports at tssi.comReplyTo: cp2m at enterprisesw.comSubject: [NU Sports] 1st Report from KnoxvilleSent: Jan 13, 2010 12:34 PM
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 nowthat 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 forthe orange, but Kiffin made it hard. I think Tennessee fans deserved abetter face to the football team.
 
            Sports radio talk is mixed here in town. Overall here in townsports radio quite good and basically pretty classy. Right now, at leastthis hour, the sports hosts are promoting letting any recruit leave for anyother school other than USC (and some adding not to allow the commits to goto another SEC school, too). Some of the players recruited this yearstarted classes today (so I assume they had already signed their commitpapers).
 
Some callers are saying Kiffin was spineless, but for most part it was verywell know that USC was Kiffin's dream school and he had let the AD knowfrom day one that this was the case, (and also told the Tennessee AD rightafter Carroll left that he would be interested in the USC job), so callersfor the most part are cutting Kiffin quite a lot of slack on leaving afterjust one year. 
 
Most of talk is who the next coach might be (sports talk fans are pullingfor Kippy Brown, already on the coaching staff or David Cutcliffe, who wasoffensive 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 thatstarted classes today and whether to release them. Evidently, Kippy Brownmade a very favorable impression at a press conference today. He is now theinterim 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 blackhead coach (correct me if I'm wrong), I would have thought that would havebeen 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 BigTen.
 
            That's all for now.  
 
            Go CATS!!   Go CATS!!  
 
            Tampa was great!
 
Chris 
Knoxville, TN
 
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