It turns out Lane Kiffin has some previous experience in the part of Florida he’ll be coaching in going forward, and it’s not necessarily positive.
As Tennessee head coach, Kiffin once made controversial remarks about Pahokee High School and the surrounding area that got him banned from the campus until he apologized. Pahokee, like Florida Atlantic, is located in Palm Beach County.
The remarks came after Kiffin’s successful 2009 recruitment of Nu’Keese Richardson, who was also heavily courted by Urban Meyer’s Florida.
“For those of you who haven’t been to Pahokee, there ain’t much going on,” Kiffin told Tennessee boosters at a 2009 celebratory breakfast, via Joseph Goodman of AL.com. “You take that hour drive up from South Florida, there ain’t a gas station that works. Nobody’s got enough money to even have shoes or a shirt on.”
Kiffin went on to directly insult the school, specifically their fax machines, when describing how they got Richardson to sign.
“They didn’t go do it at the school because they knew somebody at the school was going to screw it up, the fax machine wouldn’t work or they would have changed the signatures,” Kiffin said. “All the things that go on in Pahokee now.”
Kiffin and his staff were promptly banned from Pahokee’s campus until he apologized to the school and the town, which he eventually did.
“He said all that about the town and the school, but he took care of it. So, we’re hoping that he’ll send some scouts out here,” Pahokee football coach Blaze Thompson said.
There could be a bit of lingering awkwardness given the proximity of Kiffin’s new school and this old enemy. That said, Kiffin has made a lot of enemies, and this isn’t quite as bad as things could have been at another job he was pursuing.
