What a couple of weeks for the University of Tennessee Vols athletic programs.
First, we have one-third of our basketball team arrested.

Just when a big basketball victory over top-ranked Kansas without our jailbird players has us feeling better about ourselves, head football coach Lane Kiffin drops us like a hot potato and we hire a replacement coach most of us have never heard of.

It turns out we might do pretty well without the four basketball players arrested New Year's Day.
Fans and maybe coaches always thought senior forward Tyler Smith, the lone player out of the four to be kicked off the team so far, was providing great leadership.

It turns out he wasn't and his play had slipped dramatically the last two years. If Smith wants to play professional basketball, he'd better learn to speak a foreign language because he's not NBA material.
Not because of the gun charges, apparently you can bring guns into an NBA locker room so Smith would fit right in. Right now, he is simply not good enough to play in the NBA.

But Smith is still a young man. Maybe he can turn his life around and I wish him the best.
As for the other three players who are suspended right now but not officially off the team, if coach Bruce Pearl lets them come back it should only be at the end of the bench.
They should not even play ahead of the walk-ons.

If the coach can determine their role in the crime spree was not to Smith's level, let them only play to rest the other players so the players who didn't get charged won't be punished by having to play 40 minutes a game because the other four screwed up.

As for Kiffin, deep down most of us knew he was an arrogant, spoiled jerk.
But he was our jerk and he brought to life a program that was about as exciting as a turtle race.

I know many coaches have a dream job and you can't blame anyone for thinking coaching at Southern Cal is the top job in the country
Heck, it's in the 70s there in January and you have a great recruiting base. I never saw Kiffin as being a "lifer" at UT, but to leave us at the most crucial time in the recruiting season, take so much of the staff and give us so little chance to find the top coaching talent was shameful.

The jury is still out on what kind of head coach Kiffin will ultimately be. I did not really like his strategy at the end of the UCLA game and the Alabama game, however I considered him potentially a very good game coach and obviously a great recruiter-if he didn't bend the rules too much.

But his head coaching record SO FAR leaves a lot to be desired and if he has not hurt the program irreparably in the short run, the Vols might be better off without him in the long run.

tommy.millsaps@advocateanddemocrat.com | 337-7101