On Nov. 11 and Nov. 12, head coach Lane Kiffin espoused the virtues of his program by boasting that his football players had not been involved in any “arrests” or “incidents” in the 11 months since he had been hired.
Unfortunately for Kiffin, one of his players had been cited for theft by shoplifting five hours before a game on Nov. 7. The coaching staff found out about the incident before the game, and Nyshier Oliver was taken off the dress list and punished internally.
Kiffin attempted to explain his self-serving words against the backdrop of Oliver’s run-in with the law.
“When I said ‘incidents’, the conversation was dealing with arrests and we had not had any arrests in 11 months and 11 days,” Kiffin said, making sure to point out that Oliver “wasn’t arrested.”
Certainly, Kiffin is technically correct.
But he was disingenuous as all get out -- at best -- when he smugly proclaimed that he had been putting a bunch of altar boys on the football field, knowing full well that he had just disciplined Five-Fingered Ollie less than a week before for an incident that walks and smells like an arrest.
Kiffin can skate through this one on a technicality, but beware. Karma, she’s a bitch.
And I get the feeling that, at some point, Kiffin is going to find that out as part of a very real, very hard lesson.
