Lane Kiffin's tenure at Tennessee lasted just one season in 2009, but his legacy -- combined with the legend of his antics and those around him -- lives on. Kiffin was a trash-talker. He was fiery and confident. He wrote checks with his mouth and often cashed them with his actions.
Kiffin's personality earned him a reputation during his brief time in Knoxville, for better or worse. He was outspoken and said what was on his mind. He didn't care about the repercussions. Does he regret what he did? That's up for debate, but in a recent interview with ESPN, he compared his tenure with the Vols to the trials of being a young, up-and-coming star in Hollywood while expressing a semblance of gratitude for the lessons learned.
"I compare it to childhood actors or actresses or singers," Kiffin said. "You get so much early, so fast, and a lot of times it doesn't really work out well. A lot of the stories don't work out well because you get too much too fast. I know that happened to me because you start listening to everybody telling you how great you are and that you're the youngest this or that, especially when you get to a place as special as Tennessee.
"But I'm a lot better -- and not just as a football coach -- for everything that I experienced there."
If you're looking for a full-on expression of regret, though, look no further than father Monte Kiffin who served as his son's defensive coordinator during that 2009 season at Tennessee, and currently serves in the same position for Lane at FAU.
"We should have never left, but you can't see into the future, and there's no way you know we were going to be hit with the sanctions we were hit with at USC," said Monte Kiffin, Lane's father who was his defensive coordinator at Tennessee. "I still give Lane a hard time. I'd just bought a beautiful new home there in Gettysvue on the golf course [in Knoxville, Tennessee], and while we were trying to sell it, golfers would come by and throw cigar butts up on my porch.
"Maybe we deserved it."
