A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
Presenting your Thursday afternoon links, with a bonus video!
This is Mark Titus, aka Club Trillion, who is a walk-on for the Ohio State basketball team. As you will see in the video, not only does he have impeccably cheesy taste in music, but he can make shots too!
And now your links.
Though there is no love lost from me to Lane Kiffin – and his reportedly blatant eschewing of Vol traditions – I will be sorry to see his wife moving so far away from our Midwest jurisdiction.
But she did deliver one nice parting gift before she left: a record number of concurrent users on Midwest Sports Fans…500+ in fact, which had never happened here before.
As you can see from the graphic below, which lists out the top search engine phrases that have driven traffic to the site since 11:00 pm last night and exactly how many page views each term has driven, Layla has been a popular topic with the googlers today.
If you don’t have Twitter, ESPN, access to the Interwebs, or eyes and ears, you might not know that Lane Kffin shocked the college football world by leaving Tennessee for the head coaching position at USC left vacant by Pete Carroll’s departure for the Seattle Seahawks.
In the hours after the Kiffin story hit the Twittersphere, speculation ran rampant as to why Kiffin would leave Knoxville after only one year for L.A. (Okay, not really – it’s his dream job, he’ll get a lot of $$$, and he’ll be living in Southern California – but work with me here, it sets up the rest of the post if we assume that there is swirling speculation about Kiffin’s departure.)
In my endless quest to bring MSF readers the most hard-hitting and insightful sports information, I have put together the Top 10 reasons why Lane Kiffin left Tennessee for USC.
If you follow anyone from Knoxville or any Tennessee football fans on Twitter, you will likely see the letters “w”, “t”, and “f” typed out a lot this evening in close proximity to eachother.
Why?
Because Lane Kiffin, the young and energetic coach with the hot wife who was supposed to lead the Volunteers out of the doldrums and back to national prominence, is now reportedly heading to SoCal to replace Pete Carroll at USC.
Update: And here are the Top 10 reasons why Kiffin is leaving Tennessee for USC.
Standing at 4-4 on the season, the Lane Kiffin Project has been somewhat successful.
The Volunteers have put two different teams on the field this year: one has been reminiscent of last season’s mediocre squad, with a sputtering offensive attack; the other has been a motivated SEC contender that can play with any team in the nation.
A week ago, the Vols had a chance to knock off one of the top teams in the country in Alabama. Tennessee dropped the game 12-10 after a last second blocked field goal by Alabama’s gargantuan defensive tackle Terrence Cody. Finishing games in the fourth quarter has been an Achilles heel for Kiffin’s squad.
Today’s Link of the Day comes courtesy of the fine folks over at 3rd Saturday in Blogtober (via Deadspin), who were sent a nice little trio of pics taken recently outside Neyland Stadium (I think). They performed what I am sure was a difficult task of viewing and posting the pictures.
We thank them.
No, the pics are not of future top-10 pick Eric Berry, nor do they feature stud freshman Bryce Brown. Rather, they feature everyone’s favorite Volunteer fan: Lane Kiffin’s wife Layla Kiffin.
She is also the reason why Lane Kiffin was so willing to stir the pot and talk about singing Rocky Top “all night long” after the Vols beat Florida in Gainesville this weekend. Surely he knows, as does everyone else, that Tennessee will do well to keep the game within the 29.5 point spread. But at the end of the day, regardless of the score, he’ll have Layla there to pick up the pieces of his broken Saturday.
Why I thought I needed to come up with any kind of intro for this post, I’m not sure. Here is your link to 3SIB plus a preview of what awaits when you click through. (FYI…I did not put the best of the three pictures here.)
Holy shinkeys: Layla! — (3rd Saturday in Blogtober)
And now, some other less exciting but more informative afternoon links.
Sports:
Non-Sports:
Okay, as we wrap up another week in the sports world, a few quick hitters and then onto your daily link dump. Â
And, for the record, the pictures of Layla Kiffin (whose husband has a big debut coming up) are not gratuitous. Â As you will see, while she has nothing to do with LeGarrette Blount or Brett Favre, there is an interesting story about her at the top of the sports links.
First, updating a story that we covered in the wee hours of this morning, Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount has been suspended for the year after punching a Boise State player last night and nearly going into the stands after fans who were taunting him. My gut reaction is that it’s too much.  My rational reaction is that the kid has been in trouble before and there is a good chance that this was a “last straw” type thing.  Either way, I think the University of Oregon needs to take it upon itself not to take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach and make sure the kid gets help.
In related news, Todd McShay has spent an entire column stating the obvious: that Blount’s actions from last night will hurt his draft stock. What would we do with Todd McShay? Although, I am linking to him, so perhaps the joke’s on me.
And finally, the last quick-hitter, ancient and indecisive Vikings QB Brett Favre has been fined 10K for his chop block on Eugene Robinson. Favre thought about retiring when he received word about the fine, then decided against it, then realized his arm hurt and he missed his tractor, and then looked at himself in the mirror and marveled at how good he looked in his new Wranglers. Then he retired again. And then unretired. Then, presumably, he paid the fine.
(And yes, for the record, that is Layla Kiffin staring thoughtfully at me while podcasting. The photo might be doctored, and might have originally had Lane in it, but I will neither confirm nor deny this. Kudos again to KVB for making me look an idiot with cartoon headphones on. In honor of his hard work I try to post this picture whenever I can.)
And now onto the links!
Sports:
Non-Sports:
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* – First Layla Kiffin photo credit: GratisBay.com
* – Second Layla Kiffin photo credit: 3rd Saturday in Blogtober
