And you thought Tiger Woods was bad
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A post by "Seigle Seigle" To see more posts click here |
I am not shocked too easily, but I am pretty shocked at the report regarding Lane Kiffin, Tennessee hostesses, and football recruits (see YAHOO! for the article). Let me drop some knowledge on you about college recruiting:
When a young kid goes on a visit to a school, there are three things he’ll be given full access to, if he chooses: the insides of the athletic program (fball, bball, etc), the athletic arena/stadium/field, and coeds/alcohol/parties. Student-athletes who “host” recruits on campus figure out very quickly whether the guys wants to hit the movies or hit the bottle or “hit that.” Most of the time, directions come from the coaches like “just don’t get arrested,” “have him back by 2″, or in most cases “make sure he has a good time, and make sure he has a lot of it.”
I once heard a coach say, “all this kid wants to do is get laid, so [student host], let’s make that happen.” I’m not going to pretend that across the country that’s not what’s happening and maybe it’s not the coaches saying it, but it is commonplace nonetheless. Luckily, there are enough kids in the world to know that a school must differentiate themselves beyond sex and parties.
Lane Kiffin is the head football coach at Tennessee. Tennessee employs hostesses (or prostitutes, whichever you prefer) to walk around potential recruits (academic or athletic) and their parents to show and talk about everything that is so wonderful about attending Tennessee. Anyway, the story is that a group of hostesses from Tennessee visited high schools in GA, FL and SC to watch Tennessee football recruits play. They met a number of the guys when the recruits were on campus for official visits or camps. One recruit has said that what Tennessee was doing during recruiting was “wild,” “crazy,” and that he had “seen nothing like it before.” (First person accounts, substantiated through Gamecock friends!) Hmmmmm.
Lane Kiffin will never be indicted for sending Tennessee “hostesses” to watch recruits, nor will we ever find out what happened after games or before games with the hostesses unless a recruit/hostess comes clean. But what we do know is that Lane Kiffin obviously needs to pull rabbits out of hats to get recruits rather than prove his coaching expertise is superior, his facilities are world-class or that his school has something in the form of a degree that you can get handed after attending classes for 3-5 years.
This story won’t make you sick because you think your school or your coach is great because they have top-10 recruiting classes. It won’t make you sick because you think morals or integrity are out-dated and old-fashioned, especially when it comes to doing whatever you can to get ahead. It won’t make you sick that coaches making millions of dollars are basically abusing kids when they hump ‘em and dump ‘em in order to win games. But it will make you sick when it catches up to you. And it will catch up to you, Lane. BELIE DAT!
NY Times – Kiffin has no knowledge of rule violations
NY Times – Kiffin, UT other recruiting mishaps
