Pat Summit On Kiffin And Other Comments

Gator Bill · Jan 15, 2010

Pat Summit, one of the finest coaches around in any sport male or female in an interview on GatorCountry after they beat the Gators 66 - 64 last night. The article has a Gator slant of course but I think you can see the respect for her.

She's a class act as from every thing I can gather is Bruce Pearl.

After 36 years on the job and an all-time record 1,019 coaching wins after Thursday night’s 66-64 win over the Florida Gators at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center, not much catches Pat Summit by surprise anymore. The way the Gators scratched and clawed the entire game to stay close to Summit’s fourth-ranked Tennessee Lady Vols wasn’t the least bit surprising. She expected nothing less from an Amanda Butler-coached team, but she admits she was caught totally flat-footed earlier in the week when Lane Kiffin announced he was leaving Tennessee to become the new head football coach at USC.
“I was at a booster event in Gatlinburg where I was speaking with Bruce (Pearl, Tennessee men’s basketball coach) when I heard it,” Summit said. “At first I thought it was a joke and then I realized it wasn’t and I looked at Bruce and we said it at the same time --- ‘can you believe it?’ --- and of course, we couldn’t. We had no idea, no clue at all, he was going to be leaving.”
She admits she grew to like Kiffin in his 14 months on the job in Knoxville.
“Get him away from football and he’s hard not to like,” Summit said. “He got a charm about him and he’s funny.”
Perhaps he’s funny when he’s away from football, but when it comes to leaving the University of Tennessee for Southern Cal, Summit draws the line on funny. Summit grew up in Tennessee where Bob Neyland is legend and football tradition is part of the identity of the entire state. Although she played college basketball and graduated from Middle Tennessee State, she has been in Knoxville as the head coach at UT since she was only 22 years old so cut her veins and you’ll get a steady flow of orange-colored blood.

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“You tell me you’re leaving Tennessee and one of the great stadiums there is and tradition that Bob Neyland made into something special?” she asked. “Tennessee is one of the greatest jobs in all of college football because of that tradition and you just don’t walk away from it like that. I don’t care if it is Southern Cal, you just don’t walk away from Tennessee like that, especially after just one year when you’ve been out there making all those promises.”
Thanks to that great football tradition and a rabid fan base accustomed to filling up Neyland Stadium, Summit knows that Tennessee football will move beyond Lane Kiffin and will regain its status as one of the top tier teams in college football.
“Life will go on after Lane,” she said. “To say I’m disappointed --- well I am just like everyone else who has poured heart and soul into our university --- but I’ll get over that. I still can’t believe he did it, though. I lost a lot of respect.”
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Pat Summit On Lane Kiffin And Other Stuff

Tennessee Tom · Jan 15, 2010

If it were not for leaving the Lady Vols short handed, I might just revive the Summitt for Head Football Coach campaign.

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Pat Summit On Kiffin And Other Comments

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Pat Summit On Kiffin And Other Comments

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