College football is a never-ending soap opera, but even by the insane moments that the sport continues to produce (both on and off the field) there are still some which stand out above others.
One of those moments came in January 2010, when Lane Kiffin decided, in the middle of the night, to leave Tennessee for USC, after just one season as the schol's head coach. Kiffin's announcement quite literally led to riots on campus, and set off a string of events on the field, which Tennessee only now seems to be recovering from.
It truly was a surreal moment, and one person who lived through it was current Kansas City Chief, and former Vol Eric Berry.
Berry was asked about the night at an event on Thursday. And after starting off slow, he shared some pretty cool, and (at least to our knowledge) never before revealed details of that fateful evening. Here they are, via the Times Free Press:
"When everybody found out Coach Kiffin was leaving, the campus became one big riot," Berry said."Everybody was burning mattresses and stuff."
Sure, sure, we knew about that. But where it gets interesting is when Berry begins to talk about former Vols coordinator Monte Kiffin, Lane's father.
"Monte was in the football complex and he was in a panic," Berry said. "He wasn't going to leave his office until the fires were out. And he didn't. I think he slept there all night. I finally had to tell him, 'Coach, they're not going to do anything to you. It's your son they're after.'"
As a college football diehard, I've got to say, that story is incredible, if only because I've never heard it before.
It also shows that while we can use revisionist history on a lot of things in sports, this isn't one of them. There were, quite literally, riots on Tennessee's campus that night, to the point that the team's coaches actually feared for their safety.
It truly was a surreal moment in time, one that's even crazier to think about all these years later.
And if you do remember that night vividly, it's worth re-reading the "oral history" of Lane Kiffin's departure that Fox Sports did a few years ago.
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