Meyer Misses Chance to Dismiss 'Papa Smirk' Kiffin

Earlier this week, Tim Brando drew a parallel between Lane Kiffin and Sarah Palin. Brando's point was that Kiffin had energized the Tennessee fan base, just as Palin set Republican hearts aflutter, but that it remained to be seen how he'd translate to the nation at large. When the rubber met the road, would Kiffin prove he could withstand the rigors of the SEC? Or would he turn into football's version of Palin, an overhyped west-coaster who couldn't handle the heat of SEC football?

By halftime, Kiffin's Vols had their answer and Tennessee-Florida had its structural metaphor. Urban Meyer is the favored and proven candidate, but Lane Kiffin is the brash-talking insurgent who didn't need to win, he just needed to prove he could compete.
Florida fans came expecting a funeral, a smorgasbord of revenge stuffed into 60 minutes of football. Instead, they stood in the heat and watched a slobber-knocking and plodding affair. Clearly, Florida was the better offense and the better team. Urban Meyer came to a knife fight armed with two handguns and a howitzer cannon, Kiffin arrived with a salad fork and an oyster cracker. He tossed the oyster cracker at a Gator coed with fat arms, and dueled as best he could with his salad fork of a quarterback, Jonathan Crompton.

In the end, we learned 14 important things about both teams.

1. CBS and ESPN need Meyer and Kiffin to hate each other.

And if two mega-corporations need something to happen, and control as much of the sports arena as these two do, they can craft the story lines by taking sentences here and there and turning them into major controversies. CBS played up the angst with alternating shots of Kiffin and Meyer alongside the Green Day soundtrack "Know Your Enemy" as the game began. The montage was designed to ignite Gator bloodlust, and terrify Volunteer fans. If they'd played it on the scoreboard at Ben-Hill Griffin stadium, 15 people in orange would have simultaneously been stabbed to death with shivs embedded inside Little Debbie snackcakes.

2. Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer in suits look like an uncomfortable scene from Entourage: Gainesville.

Can we institute a new sports rule: When you're not wearing your football uniform or coaching on the sideline, there are no slow-motion shots?

It's so uncomfortable.

You could almost hear Meyer whispering, "I know a great Bible study party after this game. Two words: bourbon cake ... and truffles."

In his vest and glasses, Tebow looked like a Depression-era banker. Also, and I know several teams do it, but wearing suits to a college football game is really dumb. What's dumber than wearing the suits? Showing people wearing the suits.

3. Tennessee's offense is awful.

Immediately after the UT game, I put on other games, Washington at USC, and Michigan State at Notre Dame, and watched both teams tossing the football around the field, actually completing passes that travel more than five yards up field. I was positively giddy.

When will those days return?

Tennessee running backs Montario Hardesty and Bryce Brown are warriors out there. So is the entire offensive line. Can you imagine lining up against Florida on play after play when they've stacked the line to stop the run and yet you still have to run the football?

Hardesty ran 20 times for 96 yards. Those 20 rushes would have probably been 150 yards against a regularly aligned defense.

4. Florida lacks playmakers at wideout, and this is going to hurt them down the road.

Florida's leading receiver? Try tight end Aaron Hernandez who had four catches for 26 yards. Most of that yardage, 18 of them, came on a second quarter third and long play when Florida correctly guessed that Tennessee was going to blitz and hit him on the tight end screen for a first down.

Why does that matter? Florida is going to face an awful lot of stacked defenses from here on. Excepting that Tebow pass to Hernandez, Florida's next three longest pass plays were for 14, 10, and 10 yards.

What's even more interesting, Florida didn't even attempt to throw the ball down the field. Now Tennessee has a strong secondary and their gameplan was to make the Gators drive the field on them in small chunks of yardage, but that's got to make Gator fans a bit leery that they weren't able to exploit any mismatches down the field and stretch the defense.

If you're a Gator fan, you'd like to think that was because Florida chose to take what Tennessee gave them. I'm not so sure. I think the reality is that Florida is not very explosive on offense. At least nowhere near as explosive as they were last year with Percy Harvin.

I've said for a while that I think there's a great deal of separation between Florida and the other teams in the SEC. After this game, I take that back. I think Florida is going to have several tough games this season, and I'm not sure they'll finish the SEC gauntlet undefeated.

5. Someone needs to tell CBS studio analyst Tony Barnhart that everyone knows he dyes his hair.

One of my rules in life, if I ever think about dying my hair, I'm relying on a guy friend of mine to say, "Dude, everyone knows you dyed your hair. You like ridiculous."

At SEC Media Days everyone was whispering this about Tony "Chestnut Brown" Barnhart. Just because you're on television doesn't mean you need to dye your hair in a misguided attempt to look younger. Please stop. And when you stop, find your three best male friends and kick all of them in the groin for letting you dye your hair to begin with.

6. Lane Kiffin might be the new Les Miles when it comes to game interviews.

You know how when Les Miles hits the interview, you feel like he could say anything? From commenting on United States policy with Kim Jong-Il in North Korea to why he likes Paul Newman's salad dressing?

Put it this way, when I'm watching an LSU game and it's close to halftime and a team is taking the knee, I don't change the station because I want to hear what Miles might say.

Well, Kiffin might be the new Miles.

He told Tracy Wolfson, "See you later," to end the first interview. Which at first I thought was a reference to winning the game and getting interviewed at the end, but then he vanished at halfime and left Wolfson hanging. While Miles is wacky, Kiffin is so intense you halfway expect him to eat the microphone, spit it out, and flex for the camera. In fact, if this happened, I wouldn't even be surprised.

In the end, Wolfson went to Kiffin three times before she went to Urban Meyer.

Why?

Because they figured he was more likely to say something incendiary ... and they're right.

7. Brandon James is human. And he's going to be feeling that Janzen Jackson hit in the end zone for the rest of his life.

I don't know about the rest of Tennessee fans, but when I saw Brandon James get absolutely destroyed on Tebow's final pass of the half, I replayed the hit 18 times. In super slow-motion. In real speed. I paused the television, I got up and walked around in front of my screen and watched it anew, I was like Jim Garrison with the Zapruder tape in "JFK."

If I could download that hit and watch it every morning when I woke up, it would make my life better. Why?

A.) That Jackson hit saves four points. Because minus that hit, it's a touchdown catch.
B.) Somewhere Jabar Gaffney slammed down his television remote and said, "That's a touchdown, bro."
C.) I consider this somewhat revenge for the three consecutive punt-return touchdowns -- and the near kickoff touchdown to begin the game



It was sweet redemption.

8. Gary Danielson hates Jonathan Crompton

It's almost uncomfortable to hear Danielson talk about Crompton during CBS's telecasts. There's a thinly veiled disgust, like someone has just placed a rotten fishhead on Danielson's microphone. These guys need to have a sit-down at some point so they can hash out their differences. It's like Crompton bailed town after impregnating Danielson's daughter.

That would also explain Crompton's mustache-beard combo. That's the mustache-beard of a man with children left behind in 14 different trailer parks.

Granted, Crompton's awful, but he's not the worst quarterback in the history of college football. In fact, if you compare his passing stats with Tebow's from this game they were pretty similar. But, man, Danielson kills him every chance he gets.

I hope Crompton has a good game on CBS just to hear what Danielson says.

And by the way, the obsession with whether or not Tim Tebow gets a touchdown pass. Really necessary? I don't think so. That's about the 20th most interesting thing taking place during the game.

9. With the game tied at 3, and three minutes remaining in the first half, I did the math to prove that 20 percent of the game was already over.

I've never done this before during a football game. It's a testament to how nervous I was that the game might get out of hand early. The last time I remember doing this during a sporting event was when I was on an awful little league team and we got a 10-3 lead in the third inning. Games ended in two ways, after six innings or via a two-hour game time limit. I knew our only chance to win was the time running out. I kept asking the coach how much time was left in the game.

He said, "Do you want to win or for the game time to run out?"

"Both," I said.

We lost 15-10. In six innings.

I'm still bitter.

10. When Tim Tebow and Eric Berry collided, every child in Asia was simultaneously circumcised.

Asian newspapers are going to report on this phenomenon tomorrow. But they were all sleeping when it happened so the news will take a little while to filter out.

Thailand's planning a new tourist attraction in the red light district.

The Great Wall of Foreskin.

Too much?

11. Meyer went to the choke-out offense via Tebow.

In a particularly ominous sign for Florida fans, Tim Tebow carried the ball 24 times for 76 yards. In typical Tebow fashion, those yards were not easy. They were punishing, dirty, man yards -- an average of just 3.2 yards a carry.

Why does this matter?

Remember 2007.

By the Georgia game that season, Tebow was hurting from the punishment delivered by SEC defenses. Georgia won in a large part because Meyer wouldn't run the ball with Tebow.

Tebow cannot take 24 hits a game carrying the football in the SEC this season. Not in addition to the hits he takes dropping back to pass. I know Tebow's bigger and stronger than he was as a sophomore, but when he becomes the primary option in the running game, it's an awful sign for the offense.

The rest of the Florida offensive players combined for 20 carries, four less than Tebow.

12. Jonathan Crompton's third-and-six pass was so bad that the officials couldn't even call grounding.

I swear, they were shocked. They hadn't yet "seen the Crompton." After avoiding the rush, Crompton could have attempted to run for the first down, surveyed his receivers, or done something that was an offensive threat. Instead he hummed the ball into the Gator sideline.

It was clearly grounding, but it was such inexplicable grounding the officials didn't make the call.

You could almost hear the officials talking as they huddled.

Official 1: "I've never seen somebody ground it without a defender near them."

Official 2: "There had to have been a Tennessee receiver running a route that took him behind the Florida Gator bench."

Official 1: "You're right," blows whistle, "Fourth down."

13. Meyer to Kiffin at midfield, "You played hard, man."

I don't know this for a fact, but I'm going to hazard a guess, Kiffin and Meyer have spoken privately since the flare-up in the offseason and put the comments behind them. Again, I don't know this for sure, but I'm guessing it's happened.

That's the only way to explain the curious lack of discord between the two of them. I'm including the way Meyer took a knee to end the game. It was a respectful ending to a game that was sold as a blood feud.

I'm not complaining, I just think there's more to this story than we've seen publicly.

14. Wolfson went to Lane Kiffin first after the game. I've never seen a losing coach interviewed first before.

And that's really the story from this game. Meyer had his chance to knock Kiffin into the next century. The two teams will never meet in a more unequal talent position. Meyer beat Fulmer 59-20 and 30-6 the past two seasons. Kiffin kept it within 10 despite clear offensive limitations in his first season.

In the end, Kiffin didn't win, but he went for the jugular on the Vols' final offensive play. Even with Crompton struggling at quarterback, he dialed up the fake slant and deep ball. Florida intercepted the pass, but in the process Kiffin did something more impressive, he proved he wasn't afraid to take a chance and that he could stand on the opposite sideline from Meyer and not get destroyed.

In the process he made Vol fans across the country optimistic that better days are ahead.

In the immediate aftermath of the game, my phone blew up with messages. Every Vol fan who texted me confessed they'd never felt better after a loss. Time will tell whether Kiffin can challenge Meyer for conference superiority, but for one day at least, Kiffin wasn't deterred as he jogged off the field.

"We'll see 'em next year," he smirked.

From the early returns it's safe to say, Kiffin's no Palin. Instead he's something else -- UT's own Papa Smirk.
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Clay Travis is the author of three books. His latest, "On Rocky Top: A Front Row Seat to The End of an Era chronicles the 2008 Tennessee football season," is on sale now.