Steaming hot from the melting pot

The melting pot returns with a shot at Lane Kiffin, a long-time blog non-favorite. 

Kiffin, as I am sure most of you know, has left Tennessee after one glorious 7-6 season that was filled with mouthy predictions, zero noteworthy wins, a blowout loss in a bowl, and a collection of secondary NCAA violations.
About the only thing that Kiffin managed to accomplish in his tenure in Knoxville (other than being an annoying jackass) was sending his wife Layla to the top of the charts of various search engines, Google among them.

Yet Kiffin has managed to turn to be an average unknown college assistant to a head coaching job in the NFL, go 5-15 there before being shown the door, be handed one of the top 25 college jobs in the country, piss everyone in the SEC off and perform as noted above and then dump them after a year to get hired at one of the top five jobs in the nation.
How does this happen?
The only thing that I can think of is that Lane Kiffin must be able to sell himself in the job interview better than anyone that I have ever seen or heard about.
There can be no other reason that a coach continues to move up in his profession than by losing games and ticking people off.
Take a look at him, would you like this guy?
He looks like the smarmy heel character in just about every high school/college film made over the last 30 years!

A special tip of the hat to USC for hiring the Anna Kornikova and Danica Patrick of football.
USC is going to be interesting to watch over the next couple of seasons, that is one thing that is certain.
At least, I can enjoy rooting for the Vols again, as it just wasn't the same watching Tennessee being led onto the field by Lane Kiffin.
Click this link for more on how Lane Kiffin cared so little about Tennessee football tradition and attempted to make it USC Southeast chapter.
Editor's Note: The above link is now correct, sorry for the error.

Check the poll out, just interested in odd opinions on whether I should consider coaching youth baseball again.
Too many pros and cons to list, but I thought it would be fun food for thought.

Nice to see Bob Arum and Top Rank attempting a boxing series on Fox Sports Net.
The 36-card contract will be placed on Saturday nights with the series starting this Saturday with a card featuring undefeated 154-pounder Vanes Martirosyan against former champion Kassim Ouma.

Interesting note on the website for WHAG TV, which is the NBC affiliate locally and is the only network affiliate in Maryland west of Baltimore.
This is the 40th anniversary of the network and the article discusses how the station initially wanted to be an ABC affiliate but had to settle for NBC instead.

Another note was on the "25 Alive" nickname of the station, which they claimed was used for just five years from 1982 to 1987.
It seemed a lot longer than five years, but to people 35 and up in this area, WHAG is still often referred to as 25 Alive. The name has always been taken as a joke, but for something that was used for just 5 years and still has stuck around, makes you wonder why they didn't stick with it?.

Editors note-check this youtube video out, check the date, and then tell me that they used 25 Alive for just five years.


One more WHAG (or 25 Alive) chuckle, it must have been near the end of the "25 Alive" run, but I always remember this cheesy set of commercials that featured the various just out-of-college reporters along with the weather guy (and Battlin Bob favorite) Lou Scally just standing around the newsroom chatting by the water cooler with Tom Brokaw like they are all colleagues and tight friends and preparing to cover some breaking story like Battlin Bob kicking a fence at our little league game or something.

Then Brokaw looks into the camera and deadpans in the typical "Word of God from my mouth" voice-"Only on NBC, only on 25 Alive".
Great stuff, I wish that were on Youtube, but this is the most similar video that I could find.


I think Texas Tech was able to get as good of a hire as possible for their head coaching job in former Ole Miss and Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville, but I wonder if Tuberville isn't having second thoughts about grabbing the Red Raider spot with Tennessee now open.
Tuberville does seem to be an SEC guy and there wouldn't be the hassles of having to use Kiffin's offense like he will have to use Mike Leach's offense at Tech.

And wouldn't Mike Leach be a breath of fresh air in the SEC with the Vols?
I would love to see it, but Leach doesn't have a prayer.
Between Tennessee swinging and missing with Lane Kiffin and the toxicity that Leach has, for now, I doubt that Tennessee has the guts to take that shot...

The Frederick Keys announced their coaching staff for 2010 with Orlando Gomez moving up from Delmarva to manage and bringing long-time pitching coach Blaine Beatty with him.
Both Gomez and Beatty have been nothing but nice guys and it is good to see them in Frederick.
Former Twin Denny Hocking will complete the Keys staff in his first coaching job.
Ryan has to be pleased as another player from the "showdown set" gets signed.

If I have time, I will try to return later with some words on the late Steve Williams.
I want to devote plenty of time to that one, so that depends on my time allotment.

Photo Credit
Kiffin's-Unknown