NCAA Football

Lane Kiffin Apologizes Again, This Time for Insulting a High School

Posted Feb 09, 2009 7:14AM By Michael David Smith (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Florida, Tennessee, SEC, Coaching, Recruiting

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On Thursday, Tennessee held an event that was supposed to be a celebration of its incoming recruiting class. Instead, it turned into an opportunity for coach Lane Kiffin to stick his foot in his mouth -- and now he's apologizing, for the second time.

Kiffin had already said he was sorry for wrongly accusing Florida coach Urban Meyer of cheating, and on Saturday Kiffin apologized to a high school coach for saying that there were complications with getting one player's recruiting papers because the high school wasn't capable of assisting the player in getting the papers to Tennessee.

After confirming that a player named Nu'Keese Richardson, from Pahokee High School, signed with Tennessee, Kiffin described what Richardson's aunts went through in getting the papers to Tennessee:
"They didn't go do it at the school because they knew somebody at the school was going to screw it up, the fax machine wouldn't work or they would have changed the signatures. All the things that go on in Pahokee, now. The aunts took it over to a junior high, found a fax machine that worked and faxed them over to us at 7 o'clock and I kept it in a drawer till their 1 o'clock press conference."
Upon hearing that, Pahokee High School objected to being described in such a way, and the Pahokee Chamber of Commerce sent a letter asking for an apology.

On Saturday, Kiffin called Pahokee coach Blaze Thompson to apologize. Thompson only sounded partially placated:
"I feel like he's doing what's right in trying to make amends," Thompson said. "But I told him it was important to understand I'm getting calls from across the county and that we expect a retraction and public apology. We'll afford him every opportunity to rectify the situation."
Kiffin seems to have been under the impression that comments he made at the recruiting event wouldn't become public, which shows a shocking level of naivete for a man who has previously been an NFL head coach. But he sure is making things entertaining.

Tags: Lane+Kiffin, LaneKiffin

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