Raiders depose Kiffin, attack former coach in letter to Tennessee
By Gregg Doyel
CBSSports.com National Columnist
New Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin's rocky start at Rocky Top will get rockier early next week when he is deposed by lawyers for the Oakland Raiders, who refused to pay the remainder of his contract after firing him in September -- and who will try to demonstrate why during what promises to be a contentious deposition.
The Raiders say Lane Kiffin used his first Tennessee press conference to take a shot at his former employer.
The deposition is set for Monday in the San Francisco office of Kiffin's attorney, a front-office official for the Raiders told CBSSports.com on Friday. The deposition is necessary because of Kiffin's grievance with the NFL over the salary he says the Raiders still owe him -- two months salary from the three-year contract he signed in January 2007.
In addition to the timing of Monday's deposition, CBSSports.com also has learned that the Raiders sent a scathing letter to Kiffin's boss at Tennessee, president John Petersen, less than two months after the school hired Kiffin in late November.
Boy this guy has got some issues, but his wife is smoking hot. You can click the link for the full story but here is my favorite part.
- Kiffin accused Florida coach Urban Meyer of committing a recruiting violation while trying to woo Vols signee Nu'Keese Richardson, citing a rule that doesn't exist. Kiffin's mistaken attack on Meyer at a Tennessee booster meeting led to a reprimand from SEC commissioner Mike Slive, and Kiffin apologized to Meyer.
- While Meyer committed no violation, Tennessee has self-reported to the NCAA a handful of minor recruiting violations committed by Kiffin himself.
- Kiffin told Sports Illustrated that he had fired many staff members in his first few months at Tennessee, saying, "You can't count the number of people we've run off because they couldn't keep up, and I'm including secretaries Tennessee athletics director Mike Hamilton undermined the validity of Kiffin's comment, saying, "If he said he has fired somebody, that's not true. I don't know if he said it from a standpoint of making a point that, 'We've got to get this right.' But he didn't fire anybody."
- Kiffin reportedly told recruit Alshon Jeffrey from South Carolina that if he chose USC over Tennessee, he would end up pumping gas like other players from the state who chose the Gamecocks. Kiffin has denied making the remark, but Jeffrey's coach corroborated his player's story, saying he also heard Kiffin make the gas-pumping comment.
Every once in a while you run into a special kind of crazy in sports. So little did we know when Lane was in Oakland it was like a crazy eclipse with him and Al Davis. Oh to be a fly on the wall. And what's with the pumping gas comment? Are there even full service gas stations anymore?
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