Tennessee football: Fans boo Lane Kiffin as Ole Miss arrives at Neyland Stadium

It’s not the first time Lane Kiffin has coached a game at Neyland Stadium with the opposing team since leaving Tennessee football. However, it is the first time he has coached a game as the head coach of another program.

Vol fans, many of whom still feel burned from his decision to leave at the end of the 2009 season, after just one year on the job, were in no mood to welcome him to Knoxville, Tenn. Saturday night. In fact, they were flat-out hostile.

A night game on SEC Network, the orange wave uniform and Checker Neyland were enough to create the hype. However, Tennessee football fans added to the hype by welcoming Kiffin with a round of boos the first time he walked onto the field.

As you can see, the stadium wasn’t even full, but that round of jeers was recognizable anyway. Maybe it’s Ole Miss being in the top 25, or maybe it’s the hype behind Josh Heupel. However, fans’ excitement clearly took over.

The boos were the right decision. Many wondered if time had healed the wounds. Kiffin spoke glowingly of his time on Rocky Top, and he actually acknowledged giving the Vols a top 25 vote the past week given their two blowout wins. It’s also true that many wanted Kiffin to be rehired at the end of the 2017 season.

However, nobody should look past the damage he did to UT his one year on the job. He gutted the roster, brought in a bust of a recruiting class, sabotaged the next recruiting class and left the program under a wave of NCAA violations as he took his dream job with the USC Trojans. Taking his dream job alone would have been one thing. All of those things make it worse.

Taking the whole situation into account, Tennessee football’s struggles aren’t all due to Kiffin, but a large portion of their early 2010s struggles were. As a result, their boos were justified, even more so than his two trips to Neyland  in 2014 and 2016 as the Alabama Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator, two games in which he had the last laugh.