ShareThisUniversity of Tennessee Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt, who's probably one of the top five coaches of all time in any sport on any level, won her 1,000th game on Thursday to become the winningest NCAA basketball coach ever.
And when you include her eight national championships, her 100-percent graduation rate, the young girls she develops into women who contribute to society in ways far beyond the court and the fact she elevated her entire sport through winning, promotion and sheer class, she should have been the only headline from Knoxville on every national media outlet.
Except she was subjected to being an afterthought, because of the Vols' new boy blunder football coach Lane Kiffin thinking he was doing his job getting Vols' fans excited by falsely accusing Florida coach Urban Meyer (who has won two BCS national titles in four years and is 4-0 vs. Tennessee) of cheating in recruiting.
For any Vol fan trying to equate Kiffin's jabbing Meyer to former Gators' coach Steve Spurrier gigging Tennessee and former coach Phillip Fulmer all those years, forget it. That's a lame Kiffin comparison.
For one, Spurrier never accused (even jokingly) Fulmer of cheating. Secondly, Spurrier, though it wasn't the classiest thing to do, earned the right to needle the Vols because he owned them. He was 8-4 against Tennessee at Florida.
Kiffin hasn't even coached a college game. And the guy he's relying on for advice, recruiting and otherwise, assistant head coach Ed Orgeron, won exactly three Southeastern Conference games (3-21) in three seasons as Ole Miss' head coach before somebody snapped an ammonia cap under the collective nose of the Rebels' administration so it could fire him.
Don't forget the third Stooge, Vols assistant Lance Thompson , who came from the University of Alabama, saying that Tennessee is "going to own (the city of) Memphis" in recruiting. Guess Lance has been sipping some of Coach Ohmygawd's Red Bull.
Last time I checked, star receiver Marlon Brown of Memphis, the best high school player in the state, signed with Georgia on Wednesday, partly because of Coach Uh-Oh's clumsy recruiting. Brown, like a lot of recruits, obviously wanted to go to somewhere where he felt he would be developed as a player and actually get a chance to play in a BCS bowl, something Tennessee last did at the end of the 1999 season.
Kiffin, although I remain extremely skeptical, might turn out to be a decent coach.
But here's a news flash, Boy Blunder. Until you've accomplished something, stop talking noise. Right now, you remind me of an athlete who pounds his chest after a big play in a game in which his team is losing by 30 points.
When that happens, people just start laughing, because it's so pathetic.
By the way, the SportSouth cable network will televise a four-hour tribute to Summitt on Monday night.
Kiffin, meanwhile, will be auditioning for the Last Comic Standing.
(Contact Ron Higgins at rhiggins@commercialappeal.com.)
(Ron Higgins writes for The Commerical Appeal in Memphis, www.commercialappeal.com.)
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