Tennessee football: Five reasons to never forgive Lane Kiffin for wrecking Vols

4. Depleting the roster by pushing away players

It was suspicious when he was with Tennessee football, but when Lane Kiffin left, it proved disastrous. Phillip Fulmer’s last three recruiting classes are all considered major disappointments, and the 2007 one that was a top five class by all standards turned out to be one of the biggest busts in history outside of Eric Berry.

Part of that, though, was due to Kiffin. When he took over, there was a wave of players who left the program. Kiffin dismissed some of them without specifying why, and others left. Brandon Warren, Brent Vinsson, E.J. Abrams-Ward, Ramone Johnson, Darris Sawtelle, B.J. Coleman, Donald Langley and Lennon Creer were all four-stars or five-stars.

All of those guys could have been valuable Derek Dooley’s first year on the job, and a few of them may have made it throughout Derek Dooley’s entire tenure. However, by pushing them to look elsewhere to play or dismissing them, Kiffin made sure Dooley would have nothing.

Of course, it was obvious that Kiffin was doing this to make room for his own recruits. That would have been fine if he didn’t sabotage the 2010 class, as we brought up on the previous slide, and if his own signees weren’t busts. We’ll get to that later.