Rocky Top Talk, a Tennessee Volunteers community

Former USC assistant coach Ed Orgeron is expected to become associate head coach and defensive line coach at Tennessee.

"Whoever comes in I hope will respect all the tradition, the game maxims and things like that," McNeil said after the Vols' season-ending 28-10 win against Kentucky Saturday night. "At Tennessee, it's all about tradition and I would just like to see all of those remain the same."

"Well, I don't know too much about his background, just that he was at USC and he used Reggie (Bush) well," Jones said Saturday night, before Kiffin met with players Sunday evening inside Tennessee's Neyland-Thompson Sports Center. "I know that he lined his playmakers up in different positions, kind of like we did this year. That's all I know about him so far. I know he's young, and I know he has a pretty good history at USC. I don't know about Oakland. We'll just see when we meet him, see what type of person he is."

Lane Kiffin will become Tennessee's 21st head coach later today and Midwest City, Okla., tailback David Oku couldn't be happier. Tennessee hired the man that Oku was hoping for since Phillip Fulmer was fired almost a month ago.

"That's who I was pulling for," Oku said. "I feel real good about it. I'm just ready to get the show on the road."

Malcolm Gladwell is smarter than you. Just take that for granted. Herein is a condemnation of Charlie Weis and a plea for understanding for Rich Rodriguez wrapped into a couple of paragraphs:

THE MAG: Based on this book, if I'm an owner, I should be the most patient one in sports, right? After all, the Beatles, as you write, played a ridiculous 1,200 gigs—a lifetime—before they became any good.
GLADWELL: It's interesting. Andy Reid has said that with the offense he runs in Philadelphia, it takes a receiver three years to be comfortable in it. A receiver! I don't think we take this into account. We create offenses of such stunning complexity in the NFL, that it's impossible to truly judge anyone in their rookie season. It's ludicrous. How can you, if you're Detroit, draft all these wide receivers and then give up on anything after a couple years, or call 'em busts, when it's far more about executing a system that takes years to master? You have to give them their work.

Or if the Lions offensive players were calc majors…
Yeah, you can't go into a math class and pronounce who the great students are after two weeks. No one can master calculus in two weeks. So we need to be consistent. If you hire a coach that has offensive schemes as complicated as calculus, then you better have the patience you'd have with those students. Let's stop and acknowledge that football is not a sport for dumb jocks. It's a highly complex cognitive activity.

The plea for understanding: everyone's a rookie in this offense this year, and the most important player on the field will likely be a rookie next year. The condemnation: Weis attempted to port an NFL system like this to a college team and it blew up as soon as he had guys he actually had to coach.

The University of Tennessee has agreed in principle with Lane Kiffin to become the Vols' next head football coach, a source within the program has told the News Sentinel.

Barring any unforeseen snags, Kiffin will be announced in the coming days.

I guess my primary thought about this hire is that we're picking a really unproven guy as our head coach. We're replacing a coach with 151 wins with a guy who has won 5 games in his career.

"We have not offered the job to anybody," Hamilton said. "If anybody has said that, that would be incorrect information."

Sources close to the coaching search at Tennessee are now saying that UT has extended an offer to Lane Kiffin.

Cincinnati's Brian Kelly has become the leading candidate for the Vols' head coaching job, according to a source inside the Tennessee football program.