With his grievance against the Oakland Raiders for unpaid salary still unresolved, former head coach Lane Kiffin would be wise to say nothing about the situation.
Then again, “wise” and “Lane Kiffin” are words that rarely appear in close proximity.
In a profile by Andrea Kremer on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, Kremer asked Kiffin whether he was insubordinate.
“Absolutely not,” Kiffin said, via the Orange County Register, “unless insubordinate is . . . fighting for what you believe will help your team win. If that’s insubordinate, then I’m insubordinate.”
On the surface, Kiffin’s remarks -- which sort of reminds us of the time that Howard Cosell told Muhammad Ali he was being truculent -- make sense. Given that he’s got plenty of cash riding on whether the league office believes he was insubordinate, Kiffin’s better play would have been to zip it at “absolutely not.”
Kiffin currently is the head coach at USC. He drew intense criticism by taking the job after only one season at Tennessee, a topic that surely will generate plenty of intriguing commentary in the interview, which debuts Tuesday night on HBO.
