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Tennessee Football: Former Coach Phillip Fulmer Takes Shot at Lane Kiffin

By Caleb Calhoun

Jan 10, 2017; Nashville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers former head coach Phil Fulmer introduces the AFCA Coaches Trophy presented by Amway at the Grand Ole Opry House. Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 10, 2017; Nashville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers former head coach Phil Fulmer introduces the AFCA Coaches Trophy presented by Amway at the Grand Ole Opry House. Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports /
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Former Tennessee football head coach Phillip Fulmer made a joke about his successor as Volunteers head coach at a fundraising dinner.

Seven years after he left the school for the USC Trojans, Lane Kiffin is still a guy that Tennessee football fans love to hate.

And as the guy that Kiffin replaced in Knoxville, probably nobody enjoys that more than former Tennessee Vols Head Coach Phillip Fulmer.

According to Rhiannon Potkey of the Knoxville News Sentinel, Fulmer was the keynote speaker at the Catholic Charities Emerald O’ccasion fundraising dinner on Thursday night, and he opened with a Kiffin joke. Here’s what the article quoted him in saying.

"“I miss coaching every day. I have done quite a few things. I did CBS for a couple of years and that was a lot of fun to get a chance to do that. But it was real time-consuming. I really did it mostly to get me out of town while Kiffin was here (in 2009).”"

Watch Fulmer some of Fulmer’s speech below.

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Of course, it’s not as big of a shot as other people have taken at Kiffin, including Fulmer. Remember when he called Kiffin arrogant?  Here’s his quote from then, according to ESPN.

"“And often his arrogant attitude turned people off. The bigger question in my opinion is how does a guy like this end up with two jobs with historic football teams like Tennessee and USC?”"

That happened in 2010 on a CBS halftime show. Mike Hamilton, the guy who hired Kiffin, was still the Tennessee football athletic director.

So the shot was not so subtle.

Perhaps, with John Currie back in as athletic director, Fulmer is ready to take more shots at the Kiffin move.

After all, if he doesn’t like Currie, as Jimmy Hyams’s Gridiron Now report from last week suggests, it doesn’t hurt to keep Kiffin relevant to remind people that Currie was active in bringing him to Knoxville at the end of the 2008 season.

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