Lane Kiffin made me watch

I watched the UT-Florida game yesterday for really only one reason – Lane Kiffin made me.

I am a slight UT fan. I have been since I went to college about an hour and half away and I had numerous friends who went to school there. I have been to a few football and baseball games on the campus. I was not even cheering for them yesterday and I don’t necessarily consider myself a Lane Kiffin fan, but I had to watch.

Not too long ago the Florida-UT game was a big game and a big rivalry. From 1998-2006, UT had a record of 4-6 against Florida and Florida had only outscored UT by a total of 204-196 over those nine games. Every game was close and almost every game came down to the wire. Multiple games ended on controversy.

For the last two years this game has been a sleeper. Florida won 59-20 in 2007 and 30-6 last year. Urban Meyer, Florida's head ball coach, had Phil Fulmer’s number and the games were boring.

Enter Lane Kiffin as the new University of Tennessee Football Coach. During his introduction speech, he said, “ I'm really looking forward to embracing some great traditions at the University of Tennessee, for instance the Vol walk, running through the 'T', Singing Rocky top all night long after we beat Florida next year, it’s gonna be a blast, so get ready.” Immediately this game was put back on everyone’s radar. Oh yeah, and then Lane Kiffin accused Urban Meyer of cheating.

There was so much talk, blogs, ESPN College Gameday specials, etc. about this game when in reality the game was the #1 team in the country against an unranked 1-1 team. Would there have been this much hype for the Florida-Vanderbilt game? Not at all. Granted it is still a rivalry, but all the talk was about what Lane Kiffin said 9 months ago. I was one of the ones drawn into watching the game because of the hype. I thought, could Lane Kiffin really be right?

Lane Kiffin was wrong, and the Florida Gators won. Everyone expected them to. But, Florida only won 23-13 and UT played better than probably everyone watching expected them to. And because of Lane Kiffin there were a whole lot more people watching.