Last Night's Winner: Impressionable Student-Athletes

In sports, everyone is a winner—some people just win better than others. Like all the current and prospective college athletes who should finally be disabused of any illusions about the promises their coaches don't plan to keep.

Even in the corrupt, greedy, me-first world of college athletics, Lane Kiffin's decision to bolt Tennessee was still surprising. While Clay Travis showed that behind the scenes Kiffin never stopped crushing on USC, outwardly, he seemed to embrace the insane mentality of SEC football and all its rivalries. He trash talked coaches and players, and boasted about how the Volunteers would supplant Florida atop the conference. He uprooted his family, dressed them head-to-toe in orange. He named his son Knox, for cryin' out loud. That shows a incredible level commitment ... to do or say anything to gain an advantage in recruiting.

Little Monte Knox Kiffin didn't even make it to his first birthday—which is today—as a citizen of Tennessee, but he'll grow up as a living monument to the unscrupulousness of college football. We know all this, of course. Coaches skip out on schools all time, in the last hours before signing day, dragging assistants and unsigned recruits with them and leaving those players who believed in them stuck behind transfer rules. (Ed Orgeron reportedly called incoming mid-term freshman, who enrolled at UT this week, not to attend class so they can still come to USC.) Yet, somehow Kiffin's move seems more egregious. He went further than most coaches to win over his converts—and abandoned them quicker. That rock got what it deserved.

This might also be a good time to remind USC that they just replaced one of the most successful coaches in college history with one whose lifetime record, college and pro, is 12-21. And everything that everyone ever said about him is probably true. Even Al Davis looks like the sane one now. That may be the saddest part of all.

Volunteer Sources Say Kiffin Never Embraced Tennessee [Clay Travis] Kiffin Departure Sparks UT Protest [WSMV]