Instead of continuing to build the "USC of the South," Lane Kiffin bolted for USC itself.

One of the most prominent complaints waged against Rich Rodriguez is that he does not know, and respect, the rich traditions of the University of Michigan and its football program. I won’t get into how wrong this notion is, except to say that Rodriguez has done a good a job as one could possibly expect from a non-Michigan grad in upholding and recognizing the great traditions of this school. Instead, I’ll simply point you to an article posted today by Clay Travis, in which he quotes senior Tennessee center Josh McNeil on Lane Kiffin’s respect for UT tradition. The whole article is worth reading, but here are a few of the highlights:

“They’d replaced our highlight video from the past season with Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and Dwayne Jarrett from USC. I was like, ‘Man, I know we were 5-7 last year, but this is Tennessee. Right beside our national title trophy? Come on, man.’”

But some of the younger players believed the chant was very cool, McNeil said. It fired them up.

At least it did until they realized that the “new chant” the UT coaching staff introduced to the players was a retread.

“It was a USC thing,” McNeil says, “I took an official visit there. They used to say, ‘SC’, and the other side would say, ‘wild boys.’ They came to Tennessee and they changed SC to ST for special teams. How lame is that?”

The maxims trace back to the legendary General Neyland, the all-time winningest coach in Tennessee history and the man the stadium was named after.

Kiffin didn’t like the maxims, didn’t want to do them. For decades they’d been the final words uttered by every Tennessee player as he left the locker room and rushed onto the field.

Always the head coach led the chant.

No longer.

No matter what your opinion on Rodriguez is at this point, there is no arguing that it could have been much, much worse. I’m looking forward to rooting against Kiffin and USC for years to come — or at least until NCAA sanctions destroy the program or Kiffin jumps to coach the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

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